JUBILANT Burnley chairman Barry Kilby is relishing a return to “the glory days” after Burnley marched into the Premier League yesterday.

Wade Elliott’s wonder goal at Wembley proved enough for the Clarets to reclaim their top-flight status after 33 years in the wilderness.

Climbing out of the Championship has already cost Kilby £2million, after he promised free Premier League football to the 7,000 fans who bought season tickets for the 2008/09 campaign.

But he admitted: “I don't mind being out of pocket.

“These fans have stuck with us and come through it - thick and thin – and this season...what a season!

FROM BACK PAGE “To be in the top flight is fabulous for the football club but it is also fabulous for the town of Burnley.

“The people turned out and we’re so delighted to get that place back in the top league; delighted with what we have done.

“It is particularly good because we are back in the top flight in our 50th anniversary of actually winning the championship.

“We are going to be in the Premier League in the 1960s kit as well, which is fabulous.

“We have gradually, gradually moved up; crept up, took our chances today and moved back to where we were in those glory days.”

Alluding to the Orient game of May 1987, where Burnley avoided dropping out of the Football League altogether, Kilby added: “All credit to everybody, we have picked ourselves off the absolute bottom, edged forward and forward. and we are back in the top flight. It has been a long hard climb.”

And he was full of praise for the man who guided them to the Premier League, 18 months after his appointment.

“Owen Coyle has done a fabulous job,” beamed the chairman about the former St Johnstone boss. “In his first full season with us, working on small budgets and it is a fabulous achievement.

“He is just a great man motivator and deep down he knows the game. That is what you want as a manager.

“We are obviously delighted we made the choice to bring him down from Scotland.

“The success has been quick, it was a tough ask, but as we crept nearer and nearer I felt we had some momentum.”

The two will meet on Wednesday to discuss their plan for the Premier League.

Two lists of targets had already been drafted, of players they would target in the event of staying in the Championship or if promotion was secured.

Thankfully, it is the latter they are turning their attentions to now, and Kilby suggested that plans to redevelop the ground, which had to be shelved due to the recession, could even be resurrected in time.

“It’s a big impact on our finances; we will have to quickly think about things and get Plan C going about what we are going to do,” said Kilby.

“But it transforms us now because we don’t have the biggest gates. Now we have the money coming from the league it puts us on another plateau.

“How do we survive? What do we do? We hadn’t dared think about that really. We take encouragement from Stoke and Hull and that is what we are doing now, do our damnedest to make sure we stay there.

“We will use the money for the team and the facilities. We have got to be sensible.

“The ground move could come back into the picture, probably not in the first season – it would take too much of the money – but if we could manage to stay there one more season, then for sure.”