CLARETS defender Ian Cox has admitted he expected to be cut from the club.

The centre half's three-year spell at Turf Moor ended this week when he was released by manager Stan Ternent, along with 12 of his team-mates.

But Cox is optimistic about his future.

"It's sad but all good things must come to an end," he said.

"To be honest, with the financial state that football is in generally, I'd already prepared myself mentally for this news.

"You always hope a new contract is going to be on the table.

"But at the end of the day, it's the way football has gone and there's nothing I can do about it.

"If I'm honest I resigned myself to this a while ago. I knew it would probably turn out this way but it's always still a shock when you hear it.

"But it wasn't as big a shock as it would have been a few months ago because I'd had the chance to prepare myself mentally."

What the 32-year-old has been frustrated with is being denied the chance to play for a new contract through niggling injuries, his latest of which is an Achilles problem which has kept him sidelined since the middle of March.

"I came off in the Walsall game with it," he said. "They can be quite nasty injuries but I'm not far off fitness now and it's feeling a lot better.

"The saddest thing about this is that if I'd been playing to the end I could have given myself a better chance of earning a new deal.

"The manager more or less said the decision to release me was made for financial reasons."

The former Bournemouth and Crystal Palace player revealed he was not bitter about how his spell with Burnley had come to an end and added it was time clubs retrieved control of the game.

"The bubble's burst a little bit in football and this was going to happen to football sooner or later with the ITV Digital problems or not," he said.

"But although ITV Digital do have a lot to answer for, what's happened hasn't made me bitter.

"The money side of things in football was spiralling out of control. It's all come to a head now and it was always going to do that one way or another.

"The harsh reality of it all is that players aren't going to be able to make the demands they have in the past.

"Once you could pick and choose the best deals and barter with clubs. But now players are going to have to take what they're offered."

He added: "I've had three good years at Burnley but life doesn't stop here.

"I'm a firm believer in the saying 'as one door closes another one opens', so hopefully something will come up. I haven't got anything in the pipeline at the moment but it's pretty quiet at this time of year because everyone's still playing games.

"Hopefully I'll hear something around June, but that's the best I can hope for I think."