OWEN Coyle yesterday penned a new four-year deal as manager of Burnley and insisted he could not have let down his players by leaving the club.

Coyle was heavily linked with Celtic in the days after the Clarets’ promotion to the Premier League, with chairman Barry Kilby admitting that the lifelong Bhoy had been tempted by the Parkhead vacancy.

But the Scot soon pledged his future to Burnley and has now put pen to paper on a new contract at Turf Moor.

Coyle, who revealed in March that he had started talks with the Clarets board, has signed a two-year extension on a deal that still had two years to run.

He insisted yesterday that he would still have signed that extension had Burnley not gained promotion, and expressed the importance of fulfilling the commitment to the club he has often talked about.

Coyle was keen for members of his current playing squad to stay earlier in the year when they were being linked with more lucrative contracts at Premier League clubs.

“I think everyone knows my feelings for the football club and how much I’ve enjoyed it from day one,” said the boss, who arrived from St Johnstone in November 2007.

“I said during the course of the season with some of the players I brought in, I wasn’t bringing them in for the sake of a short fix, it was for the longevity of the club.

“There were overtures in terms of people admiring one or two of our players and I said that I wanted them to stay, so it would have been remiss of me thinking that I want them to stay but if something comes up for me in terms of a wage. It was never an issue for me.

“I think this gives everybody stability and stops all the speculation, which was ongoing and didn’t help anybody.

“But we’ve been speaking about this for a period of time. We put everything on hold knowing we had an understanding that when the time was right we would put this to bed.

“Today we are a Premier League club, but if we hadn’t been and we’d lost out, then we’d still be here announcing an extended deal.”

Asked how close he came to joining Celtic, where Tony Mowbray has since been appointed, Coyle said: “I’m not really going to get caught up in that because they’ve got a terrific manager.

“Tony’s a friend of mine and I wish him the very best. I’m sure he’ll deliver success at Celtic.

“It’s flattering that people think you’d be up to being involved at that level, but I’ve got a job to do here and I’m really so focused and committed.

“We’re ready to do everything in our power to take the club on.

“And I don’t even mean the next season, I mean in the long-term plan.”

Coyle says he is keen to bring in ‘four or five’ players this summer, with Swansea striker Jason Scotland and Manchester United forward Danny Welbeck thought to be among his targets.

And, revealing finance was not his motivation when signing a new contract, he hopes it will be the same with any new recruits.

“If I sit down with a player and they want to talk about finance before I’ve spoken about football, they’re the wrong person for me,” said the boss, who admitted he might have got a better financial deal at other clubs.

“Equally I’ve signed a new deal here and finance wasn’t the motivation.

“I came to the club from St Johnstone, on a salary knowing that in Championship terms I would have been at the bottom end of it.

“But that wasn’t my motivation. My motivation was to be the best I could be.

“It was the same when I was a player. I’m not trying to sign my own praises but I dropped salary five times as a player because I wanted to play.”