Burnley FC struck gold with combined £3m expense on Aston Villa and Manchester United stars | OneFootball

The signings of Michael Keane and Matthew Lowton proved absolute masterstrokes

Having spent most of the last decade in the Premier League, Burnley have been blessed with being able to splash more cash than most of their Championship rivals and that's led to several successful transfers down the years.

Not all of Burnley's success stories have been on big-money spends, though some have come in for fees that have been incredibly small, with former boss Sean Dyche the master of identifying free transfer gems.

David Jones, Tom Heaton, Scott Arfield and Joey Barton are among the best he ever signed on free transfers, with all five helping Burnley achieve promotion on at least one occasion.

The former trio helped get Burnley into the Premier League for the 2014/15 season, and it was the money gained by that promotion which helped them sign two players who cost a combined £3m and proved to be great servants for the club.

The Clarets were never blessed with true financial power in comparison to their rivals, so they had to recruit smartly, and they certainly did so with these two gems.

Matt Lowton

The signing of Matt Lowton has to be ranked as one of the best across the last decade for Burnley, with their £1m move to sign him from Aston Villa in June 2015 proving to be a transfer masterstroke.

Lowton was firmly out of favour at Aston Villa under Tim Sherwood and jumped at the move to Turf Moor, although he would have been acutely aware he had huge shoes to fill when he moved to the North West.

The Clarets had just sold Kieran Tripper to Tottenham, and the Manchester City academy graduate was a huge fan favourite at Turf Moor after some exceptional performances over a three-year period.

Lowton was a regular at right back under Dyche and was never displaced until Connor Roberts fell into favour in the middle of the 2021/22 season, but in between, no one ever came close to displacing Lowton on a regular basis.

He enjoyed some sensational times at Turf Moor and was an integral part of the team who famously finished seventh in 2017/18, and he played in the Europa League qualifiers the following campaign before being moved on when Vincent Kompany took charge.

Michael Keane

Another of Dyche's bargain buys, recruited from Manchester United for a fee of £2m, Michael Keane, proved to be a historical signing for the club in more ways than one.

Keane initially joined the Clarets on loan to help their fight against relegation in 2014/15, but Dyche had seen enough come January to make his move permanent and that proved to be one of the shrewdest moves in club history.

A little over two years on, Burnley sold Keane to Everton for a whopping £25m fee which had the potential to rise to £30m - a fee which to this day ranks among the biggest the club has ever received.

It's not only that whopping return on investment which made Keane's signing so special, it was the impact he made whilst playing for the club, as he helped Burnley stay up in the top flight for the first time ever, whilst he also made his England debut too.

He was a rolls royce of a defender, and the fact he is still playing in the Premier League now is a credit to just how good he was.