IT is not every night that you find your name being featured on Sky Sports Centre but just over an hour before kick-off, 'Matt the Hat' got a verbal volley from Clarets boss Stan Ternent.

All day Sky had been reporting the quotes from the Burnley boss in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph on Monday, apparently picked up by several national papers, about his anger at recent performances, especially the debacle at Walsall on Saturday.

He was asked by the Sky reporter if he was going to quit if Burnley lost to Leicester in the game that was shortly to kick-off at Turf Moor and he wasted little time in saying he was not a quitter, would not quit and never has done in the past.

But it was never my intention to suggest that Stan Ternent, one of the most successful managers in the club's history, was about to turn his back on a club that he first joined more than 40 years ago.

The story I wrote on Monday morning simply reflected the passionate comments of a manager who was still struggling to accept a performance that he could hardly recognise as one from his own team - a group of players he knows should be up there battling with the likes of Leicester for a place in the Premiership.

He had blasted his players straight after the game but the comments he followed up with on Monday morning just underlined his simmering fury.

I felt some of that fury last night as he complained about our story and the interpretation of his comments.

I am more than happy to accept that he is not a quitter and never intended his words to sound like that. If they were misinterpreted, sorry Stan, but they were definitely not misquoted.

And I maintain that the whole thrust of my article was simply to show the passion of a man who is used to better from his players and, more to the point, who demands better from them.

Stan Ternent has been in the game long enough to know exactly what he is doing. Time and again in his time in charge at Turf Moor he has defended his players, deflected criticism and kept what he wanted to say within the dressing room. And at times that is the right and proper approach.

But there is also no doubt that there comes a time when it is not just his players who need to hear about his anger and disappointment -- the long suffering fans have to hear it as well.

There are some fans who will have been to all three of the defeats before last night, at Watford, Sheffield United and Walsall.

The manager knows they spent their hard earned cash to go to each game, having had two other away games before, and he felt his players were cheating those supporters.

A couple of fans did speak to me after the story appeared and they were delighted to read the undoubted anger and frustration from the boss of their beloved team. And they never, for one minute, thought he was going to go anywhere.

It is not the first time this season that his comments have led to similar suggestions he may be leaving. There was much excitement after his post match press conference at Reading following a fourth successive defeat.

As for this week's flurry of excitement, it is a sign of how far the club has come this season that what Ternent now says and does is deemed newsworthy.

The two cup runs, a third successive season around the top half of the first division and the manager's increased profile courtesy of his autobiography all make Burnley bigger news than when they were struggling at the foot of the second division.

Four years ago this club was nowhere near as high profile and that is down to the boss.

In today's paper he has demanded that I let people know he is going absolutely nowhere.

Burnley's fans will all say amen to that.