Defender Mee insists Clarets can replace Ings

With the club’s leading scorer expected to seal a return to the Premier League over the coming weeks, Mee is confident that somebody will step up to fill the void left by the England Under 21 international.

Ings arrived at Turf Moor just one month after former boss Eddie Howe had landed Mee on loan from Manchester City ahead of the 2011/12 term.

The striker went on to score 43 goals for the club after an injury-plagued start, including 11 in the top flight.

But, as Mee alluded to, it’s not the first time that the Clarets have had to replace one of their prized assets following Jay Rodriguez’s move to Southampton in the summer of 2012 while Charlie Austin secured his move to QPR months later.

“That’s the way football is,” said Mee. “It looks like Danny is going to move on to bigger and better things.

“Everyone wishes him all the best and there are no hard feelings. He’s made a good contribution.

“But we’ve got Vokesy who scored 20-odd goals last season and obviously he’s had an injury interrupted season.

“He’ll be firing on all cylinders and will get back to his best. He’s a hell of a player when he’s at his best.”

He added: “Juke is proven in the Championship, Marvin (Sordell) as well.

“We’ve got some players here so we’ll see what happens. The gaffer will look to get some goals.

“We replaced Charlie Austin, we replaced Jay Rodriguez, and now it’s Danny Ings.

“Hopefully someone will step up who is at the club at the minute.”

The 25-year-old full back, who netted twice last season and contributed to nine of the club’s 10 clean sheets, insists the fire and ambition remains within the squad to bounce back to the top tier.

Ahead of the Championship term, with fixtures announced on June 17th, he said: “We’ll move on and go hard again next season, everybody is already looking forward to it.

“We really want to be back in the Premier League for sure, it’s something that we’ll be desperate to do next year.

“If everyone sticks together and works hard again next season, you never know what can happen.”

Mee added: “We’re proud of what we’ve done. We gave everyone a game.

“We’re obviously disappointed that we went down, we feel like we deserve to be in the Premier League and that will spur us on next year.

“The fire is there, we desperately want to come back and do it all again.”

Related to this story:

• Clarets sign Ben Mee on loan from Manchester City

• Jay Rodriguez seals move to Southampton

• Charlie Austin signs for Queens Park Rangers