WHILE his Burnley team-mates were hauling themselves through a gruelling pre-season routine, Ashley Barnes was sitting on the couch in his living room, topping up on painkillers and watching Jeremy Kyle.

A serious knee ligament injury can never come at a good time.

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Barnes suffered his on the final day of the Premier League campaign. and so, unlike Sam Vokes, Kevin Long and Dean Marney, he didn’t miss any of the Clarets’ top flight adventure, and could start his recovery during the off-season.

But it also meant there was little football on TV to get him through those long, motionless hours at home.

Watching daytime television was pretty much all there was in those early days.

“I was in agony sat on the couch, my wife kept passing me the tablets, there was enough there for God knows how long,” the 26-year-old says of his dark days after undergoing surgery.

“There’s nothing you can do apart from the rest and do little exercises to build up.

“Now I’ve got football to watch every week, that’s helped me.

“It was difficult in the summer. After getting relegated the first thing you want to do is progress and show you should be back in the Premier League and get the goals to help us but I wasn’t able to do that.”

It was quite a journey to the Premier League for Barnes. As a 17-year-old he was playing for Paulton Rovers in the Southern League Division One South and West. Fast forward eight years and he was scoring at the Etihad Stadium and White Hart Lane - and making an enemy of Jose Mourinho.

Barnes shrugged off Mourinho’s criticism for his tackle on Nemanja Matic when it could have shattered the self belief of lesser players, so while he acknowledges this spell on the sidelines has been his biggest challenge yet, he has also embraced it with positivity.

“It’s been the toughest spell of my career,” admits the former Brighton striker.

“You don’t want injuries and I’ve not had one this bad before, it’s the worst one to do.

“To get my head around that was tough but you have to have a laugh and a joke along the way as well. It’s not all been tough, it’s been a good journey.”

And it’s not a journey Barnes has had to take on his own.

Burnley’s rotten luck with cruciate knee ligament injuries is scarcely believable.

When he suffered the injury at Villa Park at the end of May Barnes became the fourth Claret in 14 months to suffer a similar setback after Vokes, Long and Marney.

And the hoodoo didn’t end there. Three weeks into this season Lukas Jutkiewicz became victim number five at Bristol City.

“We do talk about it but you’re all different in your injury, everyone heals differently and reacts differently to different things,” Barnes said of the stricken five.

“You might find something that’s different to them.

“We’re there to help each other and give advice. I’ve had help from the boys, little exercises that they have recommended to me and vice versa.”

Barnes has now reached the stage where he is out of the gym and back training on the grass, with the target being a first-team return before the end of the season.

Kicking a ball again for the first time and getting back on the turf at Gawthorpe have been significant staging posts on the journey, but the striker who scored five Premier League goals last season is aware he can’t start looking too far ahead just yet.

“I’ve been kicking a ball, not properly because you don’t do certain things and it’s still painful. It looks like I’m doing alright but I know myself that I’ve still got a lot of work to do,” he said.

“You think ‘I can kick a ball now, I’m back, everything will just fall into place’, when that’s not going to happen, I have to keep working hard in the gym.

“I can’t be looking too far ahead, I have to focus on my work.”

He added: “Getting in the team is a long way away, the first reserve game is going to be a massive turning point for me, just to play a game, it’s little steps “You look ahead but you’ve got to peg yourself back. You try to look ahead but then realise you need to concentrate on little things first.”

Long and Marney are both in the final stages of their return, playing full games for the development squad, but they will find it harder to get back in the side following the summer recruitment which has strengthened the competition for places at Turf Moor. Marney’s route back into the side is currently blocked by Joey Barton, while Barnes will face a battle with Vokes, Andre Gray, Rouwen Hennings and Chris Long on his return - with Jutkiewicz not far behind.

It’s a far cry from the small squad that greeted him on his arrival from Brighton in January 2014, when he was brought in to cover and provide competition for Vokes and Danny Ings.

“I’ve noticed a difference, there’s plenty more competition than when I arrived, and we’ve got Deano and Longy coming back as well,” he said.

“There’s already people missing out on the squad. Deano was a regular for us last year, he’s going to be pushing for a start.

“You need that fight for places. I have every faith in my own ability that I can succeed and get back to the levels I was at last season.

“It’s a tough league and you need a big squad. The first season we got promoted we had a small squad but the lads coped. The achievement in that season to get promoted was amazing.”

He added: “You look through the whole team and the competition is there. That’s something we needed, and maybe we can still add to the squad.

“We’re doing so well at the moment, the gaffer has got us all working hard and hopefully we can challenge for automatic promotion.”