FORTY years ago teenager Stan Ternent joined the Clarets and began his lifelong love affair with the town and the club.

Yesterday afternoon he put pen to paper on a deal that will ensure that will continue as a working relationship until the end of next season at least.

"I am delighted to have signed an extension and I see it as a big vote of confidence from the chairman and one in the right manner," he admitted.

"Normally when a manager gets a vote of confidence it means he is going out, but the new deal shows that we are staying. As far as I am concerned that is brilliant.

"Burnley has been good for me and I hope that I have been good for Burnley. I feel we have made progress all the way down the line and we have to keep doing that.

"As a football manager you just try and improve as you go along. Over time someone may come along and make you an offer of an extension and then you think about it and sign it.

"This new deal will take me up to the end of next season but I hope that I will be in the same situation at this time next year because that will show that we have been successful."

His plan to continue beyond even his new extended contract shows that his passion for the game has not been dulled.

Having had his career as a player cut short by injury after playing for Carlisle as well as Burnley, it was only a matter of time before he got into coaching.

Ternent started looking after the youth team at Sunderland and has coached at Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Bradford as well as managing Hull City, Bury and his first experience at Blackpool some 23 years ago.

He has already managed longer at Turf Moor than at any other club and he has now reached the top ten of the longest surviving managers in the country.

"We have got a happy club here," he explained. "When you get up in the morning and go to work there is nothing worse than just thinking you are going to a job.

"I haven't got a job, this is a way of life and you have to be happy to be able to do it."

The financial problems that have blighted football since the collapse of ITV Digital have not helped. In fact the money worries have led to suggestions that Ternent's future has been in doubt amid talks of cutbacks, something both he and the chairman always denied.

The manager is determined to have success despite the off the field problems, and he said: "It is important that we are successful on the field because that ensures more TV games like the two coming up."

It is clear that Ternent's affection for all things Claret and Blue runs very deep and he admitted: "There is always something happening here."

And for the next 18 months at least his job is to make sure that the happening things are good ones!