ANDRE Gray has warned the Premier League that Burnley will be back even better next season as they prepare for back-to-back top flight campaigns for the first time in four decades.

The 2016/17 season ended on a disappointing note as the Clarets were beaten 2-1 at home by West Ham, but they had already secured their top flight status for next term with relative ease weeks earlier.

Defeat means a 16th place finish for Sean Dyche’s side, but they finished six points clear of the bottom three and can now look forward to resuming top flight duties in August.

And Gray believes the Clarets will return even better next year as they soak up the lessons learnt from this season.

“I think we’re going to get better next year,” the 25-year-old said.

“We’ve stayed up now, we’re going to have that confidence and know the job a bit more, so hopefully we can kick on.”

A lot of clubs who survive in their first year in the Premier League then suffer from second season syndrome, but Gray is confident that is not an ailment unlikely to hurt the Burnley dressing room under Dyche.

“The gaffer won’t let that happen. It’s the perfect place to do it,” he said.

There was a celebratory atmosphere at Turf Moor for the final day visit of the Hammers and it looked like the Clarets would end on a high when Gray set up Sam Vokes up to give Burnley the lead, only for Sofiane Feghouli and Andre Ayew to give the visitors the victory.

“It’s a bit of a disappointing end but at the start of the season we’d have taken that,” Gray said of Burnley’s season.

On his own personal campaign which yielded 10 goals, nine of them in the Premier League, as well as a ban early in the campaign for historical social media posts, the striker added: “It’s been good for me. With the ban, I think I missed six games all together, so it was important to learn from it and try and get back on the pitch and scoring.”

In the end Gray missed out on the club’s top scorer award to Vokes, who hit 12 in all competitions and reached double figures in the top flight with his final day goal.

But former Brentford striker Gray was happy to turn provider for the afternoon, although he felt he could have added to his own tally, missing two good first half chances.

“It was great (to get an assist),” he said. “We were fighting for top goalscorer but it was great to get another assist and it couldn’t have dropped to anyone better.

“I should have scored, especially the one in the first minute, I should have done better. I had another one as well and flicked it past the post, it was just one of them days.”