Martin Paterson is aiming for a swift return for Burnley FC

The 23-year-old hit 19 goals as Burnley won promotion to the Premier League exactly a year ago today.

But the waspish former Stoke and Scunthorpe forward was denied four months’ playing time in the top flight, as his dream was cruelly put on hold by a knee injury.

On his return, he hit four goals in 13 games, despite being deployed primarily as a wide player, as the Clarets were relegated back to the Championship.

And having had a taste of the big time, the Northern Ireland international is desperate for more: “My memory of the Premier League personally is that I wish I had played more games in it.

“I think I was robbed of four months.

“When I got back just after Christmas, I think I kicked on from there.

“I can’t regret an injury, but I wish I wasn’t robbed of those four months.

“I think it would have been better for me as a player, but there we go.

“When you’ve played in this league, if you don’t want to come back and play there, I don’t think you should be in the game.

“It’s the place to be, but unfortunately we’ve got to go down and play in the Championship, which is a very tough league to get out of.

“That’s the task.

“Do you take that as a challenge or do you try to wriggle out of it?

“Personally I take it as a challenge to come back next year and put Burnley back into the Premier League.”

Paterson was on target as the Clarets signed off from the Premier League with a 4-2 win over Spurs at Turf Moor a fortnight ago, and he takes that memory and performance forward into the close season, as a benchmark: “Relegation was tough to take for the club and the players, but if we can take something from it, I think the performance we gave against Spurs I think shows maybe if we’d have played like that all season, we might have had a real good chance of staying up.

“I think we went out there and played with a bit of freedom, and in tense times this year maybe we should have done that rather than tightening up whenever we did.

“But that’s the way of the world and that’s football and now we’ve got to kick on as a club and a team.

“If you can’t take anything from that, you shouldn’t really be playing.

“We’ve beaten Tottenham, a very strong Tottenham team as well, playing football and doing it the right way.

“We passed it as much as they did, and I think it shows that if we come back and keep a very good squad next year we can be a real force.”

Paterson is not a player wondering what his future holds with the club, with players out of contract mulling over new deals, or where their next move will be, but he hopes the majority of the squad can stay together: “I think you go away and you come back for pre-season. I can’t speak for the other players, but for me you go away, stay fit and come back. We come back for pre-season as fit as we can and we kick on.

“As always there are comings and goings, but I think if a core remains it doesn’t matter as long as you keep that core.

“I think we will, personally, and we’ll kick on.”