Clarets boss Stan Ternent admitted he was "delighted for both his players and for the fans" after the 2-0 derby triumph against Preston North End at Turf Moor last night.

"It is always nice to win a derby match and I thought we fully deserved it," he said. "There have been a few bits and pieces the fans have not been happy with and I hope this win goes some way to repairing that."

The three points finally took the Clarets beyond the 50 mark that Ternent always chases at the start of every season and he confessed: "That is very important to us because it means we will maintain our first division status.

"Probably 49 points would have done it but it is nicer to be on 52 and we still have half a dozen games left. We have done our best and that is all credit to the players."

Now he is hoping that by ending a miserable run of eight games without a win, the run in to the season may still be a positive one.

"I hope this win can be a launch pad," he said. "We have had a really bad time of it since the quarter final of the FA Cup but we are a good team when we have got them all fit."

Ternent is a very long way from having all his players fit at the moment and, with Arthur Gnohere suspended, he had just 13 senior pros available for last night's game.

But goals in either half by Dimitri Papadopoulos and Robbie Blake, with a breathtaking free kick, were enough to bring some much needed joy to Turf Moor.

"It was a full blooded derby match and I thought we competed well," he said. "There were some very good individual performances."

At the same time he acknowledged that his side benefited from one key decision, the failure of an assistant referee to spot that Eddie Lewis had given North End the lead when his free kick crashed down but over the line off the crossbar.

"We got a couple of breaks which we haven't been getting," he said. "Like when Drissa headed the ball off the line but Bradford got the goal."

Papadopoulos scored his sixth goal of the season, his first not from the bench, and he was in an unfamiliar right wing role with Glen Little and Brad Maylett out on loan.

Little continued to be a topic of conversation with North End fans taunting their rivals by singing: "Where's your Little gone?"

But Ternent insisted that developments elsewhere yesterday indicated the depth of the financial crisis in the first division.

"At Gillingham two staff have gone," he said. "I've taken a massive wage reduction here and so has Sam. But the main thing is Burnley Football Club and the financial situation is the same at a lot of first division clubs."

The loss of the ITV Digital money has been a constant thread running through the season but having at last got back to winning ways, Ternent hopes that the troubled times may at last be behind his side.