IT’S not so long ago that most of our local rivals had much to say about their standing in the game while simultaneously sneering down their noses at goings-on at Turf Moor.

Funny how things turn out… We all, for example, remember Preston North End pitching up in 2010 and bellowing “We are superior!” for 84 minutes before somehow turning a 1-3 lead into a 4-3 defeat in the last six minutes.

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They then suffered relegation and spent their next few campaigns battling it out with Scunthorpe, Walsall and Colchester in League One.

Around the same time, Blackpool’s followers were enjoying life in the Premier League and had re-appropriated Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life to express their views on the overall quality of the playing staff at Turf Moor.

Five years on and they’ve blown the money and are struggling to avoid a third relegation in five seasons.

Way to go.

Blackburn Rovers fans, meanwhile, were so convinced of their superiority that they took to taunting their claret and blue rivals with claims that they would never play us again. That was until the Rao family stepped in around 2010, got rid of a relegation-proof manager and ended up with a huge debt as well as having a transfer embargo slapped on them.

All of which brings us nicely to last Saturday’s opponents, Bolton Wanderers, the club Owen Coyle described as being “five or 10 years ahead of Burnley” when he walked out in January 2011.

Four-and-a-half years later, the Trotters are bottom of the Championship, trying to get a tune out of the 37-year-old Emile Heskey and have close on £180m of debt weighing them down.

“There’s no doubting that the transition to the Football League has been a challenging one,” remarked chairman Phil Gartside earlier this year, revealing a hitherto undisclosed gift for understatement.

Meanwhile, Burnley are the only Lancashire club who are breaking transfer records to bring in star strikers, can boast a keeper in their ranks recently called up for England and have one of the hottest managerial properties outside the Premier League.

Football tends to work in cycles, and there’s every chance that the Clarets may find themselves falling on harder times in the future.

But for now, there’s no disputing our billing as top dog in the locality.

Let’s enjoy it. And let’s prove it on Saturday lunchtime.