Former Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness believes Burnley fans may have to temper their expectations ahead of their return to the Premier League this season.
Vincent Kompany is preparing for his first campaign in management in the top flight after storming to the Championship title last term.
The mood among the Burnley fanbase is understandably confident, while a recent survey of fans of all Premier League clubs suggested the Clarets are the most likely of the three newly-promoted sides to secure survival.
But Souness, a former Blackburn Rovers manager, of course, cheekily suggested some of the optimism at Turf Moor might be going a little overboard.
He told BBC Radio Lancashire: “SkyBet did a survey which threw up a stat that 25 per cent of Burnley supporters think they’re going to win a cup this year. Tell me about that!
“It will be tough. The manager has done fantastically well there, going into a club at a difficult time having been relegated with plenty of players coming to the end of their contract, so he’s done really well getting them promoted and with the brand of football they played.
“Like every team that gets promoted, a Monday morning is a very different Monday morning to the last 12 months when they were winning nearly every weekend, coming in and everyone was looking forward to training, everyone was buoyant and in a good mood.
“Now most weekends, they will be coming in feeling sorry for themselves so the manager has a bigger and a different job this time around to keep lifting them up.
“It is going to be disappointing for them a lot more this year than it was last year and it’s how these players deal with it, as well as the manager and his staff.
“Little Bellers (Craig Bellamy) will have his part to play, Mr Angry, he’ll have a part to play – if you ever see him, give him my best because I’ve not seen him in a while – but they’ve got a part to play to keep the players’ heads up.”
