Boss Owen Coyle has identified, and, indeed, made moves, for players he feels will help the Clarets prosper in the top flight.

But Coyle will not be held to ransom over wage demands – he wants players who have a desire to play for the club, not those who are interested in lining their pockets.

And while the club will have the smallest wage budget in the division, it is not as if players won't be handsomely rewarded.

Flood feels the club can sell themselves better than ever, and believes Coyle has a great chance of getting who he wants.

When Flood first came onto the board early in 2007, then-Clarets boss Steve Cotterill was able to sign Ade Akinbiyi, Steven Caldwell, Joey Gudjonsson, and loan duo Eric Djemba-Djemba and Mike Pollitt.

However, a number of targets failed to come to fruition, and Flood said: "I think it will be much easier to get the right players this year.

"When I first came it was like selling sand to the Arabs.
"At board level, I tend to network a lot with the other clubs and chat to agents and get them onto games with me.

"We've got a number of players through relationships that have been built up.

"But when I first came on board, unless we offered the right wage the answer was 'no'.

"We'd have to go up a couple of grand, but now we don't have to do that.

"People will come to Burnley because they want to play for Burnley.
"We can sell at boardroom level now, at manager level and we're in the Premier League, so it's not a difficult sell like before.

"Let's say we'd not won at Wembley, it would have been easier again to get players having been in the play-offs.

"But now we're in the Premier League, we should have our pick.
"There are a lot of USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) about Burnley now with Premier League football; it's a real football club and the environment's interesting.
"It's sort of a David and Goliath type.

"The line that Owen rolled out about fitting the whole of Burnley into Old Trafford gives you a context!"

Burnley famously used the smallest number of players in the Championship last season – 23, of which six started only 10 games between them.

And after waving goodbye to Akinbiyi, Alan Mahon, Gabor Kiraly and Steve Jones, Coyle is expected to bring in around six or seven new players.

Flood mused: "In an ideal world we'd have probably had another two or three more players last season, who Owen wanted to play.
"It was said it was a small budget and small squad, but it was the highest budget the club's ever had, and probably one of the biggest squads we've had.

"But Owen didn't want to play six of the players.
"He did have the options, but to be fair to him he stuck to the team he really wanted, which worked for him.

"This next year will be fully Owen's team, because all Steve Cotterill's lads will have either moved on, or he's kept them with the ones he wanted.

"They are his men, which will be a good thing I think."