CLARETS chairman Mike Garlick is confident Burnley will end the transfer window stronger than they began it.

Although it has been a quiet summer at Turf Moor so far it could yet turn into a busy window for the Clarets and boss Sean Dyche.

With the future of Michael Keane and Andre Gray unclear, and George Boyd set to leave the club when his contract expires tomorrow, there are holes to fill in the squad.

But Garlick has already said the club are likely to spend more than the £32million they splashed out on players during the 2015/16 season, including £13million on record signing Robbie Brady, and he insists the target has to be to have a stronger squad in place on September 1 than that which finished last season in 16th place on 40 points.

“Our major objective when the window closes up for this season is that when that happens we’ve got to be stronger than we are sat here today,” the Turf chairman said.

“Will that be hard work? Yes. Will we able to achieve it? I believe we can.

“I think it’s fair to say going forward we will spend more on transfer fees in the coming season than we did last. And player wages aren’t going down.”

Although Garlick expects Burnley to spend more this summer he insists there is a clear budget in place that is understood by everyone involved.

And the chairman insists sticking to that can help the club plan for the future as well, making improvements off the pitch such as the £10.6million redevelopment at the Gawthorpe training ground.

“I think it’s all about being clear on your budgets and what you want to spend,” he said. “What we actually spent this year was bang on our budget in terms of player wages, transfer fees, and if you can do that then you can plan. If you can plan you can do things like improve your infrastructure.”

Those off-pitch developments have also been funded by the £30.1million profit Burnley posted from their 2014/15 Premier League campaign, which enabled them to pay off all debt as well, leaving them in a healthy financial position.

Their 2015/16 accounts showed a £3.7million loss and while Garlick believes it will be back to profit for the 2016/17 campaign just gone, he doesn’t expect it to be as high as £30million again.

“There’s a few factors we have to take into account,” he said. “The profits will be very healthy. They will actually be a little shade lower than they were last time in the Premier League.

“Why is that? First of all we’ve spent £32million on players this time around rather than £12million last time. All the improvements we’ve put into the training ground and stadium kicked in in the last financial year, not the time we were in the Premier League before. Players’ wages have gone up. You add all those things together, yes, still very profitable but a tiny, tiny bit below last time.”