DURING the Clarets pre-season trip to the Isle of Man last July, Stan Ternent told me he had three targets for the coming season.

First and foremost he wanted the club to maintain its First Division status in the wake of the financial crisis created by the collapse of ITV Digital.

With that in mind his other two aims were to break with the club's recent failures and enjoy long and financially beneficial runs in both the FA and the Worthington Cups.

The Burnley boss achieved all three of his stated goals. The club comfortably stayed up and reached the last 16 of the Worthington Cup and the last eight of the FA Cup, the best runs for two decades.

But his ruthless axing of so many key players at the end of the season, and his determination to rebuild a new team for the next campaign, shows that he is under no illusions about the fact that the team performed too badly, too often.

When they suffered a nightmare 6-5 Hallowe'en defeat at Grimsby I remember thinking I had never seen a game like it and I never expected I would see another one. How wrong I was.

There was a series of results to bring any manager out in a cold sweat, let alone someone like Ternent who has built his reputation on building sides with solid defences, a master at claiming a 1-0 win.

It is hard to know if any one game convinced Ternent that major surgery was needed to make his side a top 10 contender again. It may have been the accumulated affect of having to walk into post match press conferences and explain the unexplainable.

What was not in doubt after that last home game against the Owls was that when the Clarets next emerged from the tunnel at Turf Moor it would be a very different side that the fans would be cheering.

Ternent has no room for sentiment in the brave new world of football, a world with more players than money to pay them.

Now new leaders must come forward. Gareth Taylor has established himself as the best target man in the first division, Graham Branch deserves his new deal because of a consistently good season, Drissa Diallo looks like an exceptional find while Ian Moore is one of the most willing runners around.

Then in the closing weeks of the season came the encouraging debuts for youngsters Matty O'Neill and Richard Chaplow.

Then you have got Glen Little and Robbie Blake. Burnley's best football of the season came when these two were firing in tandem, most notably on that memorable night against Spurs.

Ternent has a massive task ahead of him this summer, and putting a team together to compete at the top end of the table next season could be his toughest yet.