BURNLEY chief executive Paul Fletcher believes that the club still have the budget to challenge for promotion during 2011/12.

The Clarets were recently priced out of a move for former loan star Jack Cork and last week acknowledged that they must increase corporate revenue if they are keep up with their rivals in the long term, unveiling plans for a new Premier Club at Turf Moor.

The Burnley board look set to continue with a prudent approach, stressing that they will not do anything to jeopardise the future of the club by overspending on players – despite a second year of parachute payments worth £16m.

But the Clarets’ sights remain firmly set on a return to the top flight and Fletcher insists that history has shown that promotion is possible, even if the club have to overcome sides with superior budgets.

The Clarets reached the Premier League via the play-offs under Owen Coyle’s management in 2009 despite being far from the wealthiest club in the Championship at the time.

And they hope Eddie Howe can now repeat that feat despite increasing competition from a number of sides with foreign investment.

Asked if he was confident Burnley could go up with their current budget, Fletcher said: “Absolutely I’m confident – and the reason I’m confident is that we’ve done it before.

“If you’d asked me three seasons ago if I was confident I would have said yes and I say the same now.

“We run a very tight budget here at Burnley Football Club but we’ve got an intelligent, young, dynamic manager and we will support him as best we can.

“The good thing about Burnley Football Club is that we are owned by local people.

“There are a lot of foreign investors coming in at other clubs and that is something we have to compete against.

“But I’m very proud that Burnley was a founder member of the Football League and we are still here in 2011.”

The Clarets made their first signing of the summer last week, bringing in defender Ben Mee from Manchester City on a season-long loan.

They have also rejected bids from Portsmouth for striker Martin Paterson but lost out to Southampton in their attempt to sign former loan midfielder Cork on a permanent basis.

It still remains uncertain if the Clarets will opt to bring in another central midfielder after missing out on Cork and, if they choose to stick with what they have, Fletcher thinks that Chris McCann can more than ably fill the void.

The 23-year-old made an impressive comeback from a long-term knee injury in April and committed his future to the club by recently signing a new two-year contract.

Fletcher said: “Of course we hoped we could sign Jack, but he wasn’t our player.

“Unfortunately that is the downside with loan signings, for every club.

“If they don’t do well you can’t wait to send them back and when they do well they get a lot of admirers elsewhere.

“It was a particularly difficult one because we knew that all the fans wanted him, and every single director and the manager wanted him as well.

“We did our very best but sadly you don’t get every player you want.

“But it’s not a total disaster for the club. It was a total disaster for my granddaughter, aged eight, because Jack was her pin-up and she fell in love with him when she met him three months ago, so I’ve had that to deal with.

“But there was another slight factor in that Chris McCann has signed a new contract, he has come back from injury and was fantastic at the end of the season.

“You could argue that they play a similar role and he will be an able replacement.

“I’m very confident that Chris McCann will fill that hole that’s been left. That’s my view.”