AFTER back-to-back wins in the Premier League you would have thought life couldn’t have got much better for the Clarets at the moment.

But that was before Sam Vokes came through his first 45 minutes in eight months unscatched, and only went and scored on his return to action as well.

What a few weeks this is turning out to be for Burnley’s Premier League season.

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Vokes hadn’t kicked a competitive ball in anger since suffering his cruciate knee ligament injury on March 29 against Leicester at Turf Moor.

While his team-mates have been through another gruelling pre-season and got their top flight campaign up and running, Vokes has been forced to watch and wait, going through his box sets and developing an addiction to Homes Under the Hammer while he tried to get his fitness back and his knee healed.

It is difficult to imagine the frustration the Wales international must have felt, having been a key figure in the side who earned promotion from the Championship, unable to join in the Premier League fun and powerless to help as they stumbled to a 10-game winless start.

But his appearance for the development squad at Gawthorpe on Tuesday afternoon was ill have been a huge lift to everyone at the club, not least the man himself.

In recent weeks his team-mates have been queuing up to talk about how they can’t wait to have him back, and on Tuesday Danny Ings sounded delighted at the news as he spoke at the launch of his new disability sports project.

Last season Ings and Vokes lifted each other to new heights. They both went into the season with less than prolific goalscoring records, but their partnership clicked immediately as their almost telepathic understanding fired the Clarets to promotion.

The season before Vokes had scored five times in 53 appearances and Ings three times in 33 games, but playing alongside each other last term Vokes plundered 21 goals and Ings 26.

There is no doubt that they belong firmly in the category of strike partnerships that just work, but the advantage of the successive victories secured by Sean Dyche’s side is that any pressure there may have been to get the two of them back together quickly has cleared.

After the partnership with Vokes, Ings has already had three separate strike partners this season, with Lukas Jutkiewicz, Marvin Sordell and Ashley Barnes playing alongside him in recent games, but it is Barnes who has bought the best out of the England Under 21 international, as well as scoring himself, and he is more than capable of filling in for Vokes until the Welshman is fully fit.

Dyche has spoken of the need to tread carefully with Vokes, and he is right to do so. It is a serious injury he is recovering from and he needs to be right before he attempts to play in the Premier League.

But the anticipation of seeing Ings and Vokes reunite their partnership in the top flight is building, and the impact it could have on the Clarets this season is one of the big questions everybody is looking forward to seeing answered.

Before his injury Vokes was in the form of his life. It will take time for him to try and reach those standards again, but if he can get close then it will be like a new signing for Burnley, and it could make a huge difference in the final six months of the season.