BRENDAN Flood has stressed that Burnley will not be stretched beyond their financial limits during the January transfer window.

The Clarets have left balls in the courts of Sheffield Wednesday, Celtic and Dundee United with a trio of bids that have been rejected, while the possibility of bringing Alan Lee back to Turf Moor has not been disregarded either.

Wednesday rejected an offer for Glenn Whelan, believed to be around £400,000, the same figure that was tabled for Celtic's Derek Riordan, who seems set to join Bristol City for £750,000, while Burnley were said to have fallen short of Dundee United's valuation of Barry Robson.

An offer in the region of £750,000 was not enough to tempt the Terrors, who I understand are looking for at least £1.25million for the goalscoring midfielder before entering into negotiations.

The Clarets have yet to secure a permanent signing in the January transfer window.

Loan defender Stanislav Varga the only addition so far, while Andy Gray has officially completed his £1.5million switch to Charlton Athletic.

Operational director Flood has faith in Coyle's powers of negotiation to wheel and deal in his efforts to make Burnley a strong Championship force capable of pushing for the Premier League.

But he has reiterated that the board aren't demanding overnight success.

"The key thing to remember is the transfer window involves a desire to forget everything that's been done over the past 12 months and focus on an amount of money that gets spent in this month," he said.

"Barry and I are committed guys and we're continuing to make further commitments to the club, and I think everyone can see that we are getting a better squad and we're not going to do a QPR.

"It's a medium to long-term plan to get Burnley established one day in the Premier League.

"Charlton are probably fairly ruthless because they've got the parachute money to play with.

"They must have a less focused attitude on how they buy players.

"We buy them with a view to keep them for the length of the contract.

"We can't afford to make short-term decisions like that.

"No-one said we were going to go up this year.

"We're going to compete to go up but we never said that's what we expect.

"What we're doing is getting a better squad year on year.

"And what we can promise is that we're doing our best and it will get better every season."

He added: "I think we've got the right man in the job to help us do it.

"I think Owen Coyle has got the standard to get Burnley where we want to be."

Meanwhile Dundee United have left the door open for Burnley to come back with an improved offer for midfielder Robson.

Both the Clarets and Nottingham Forest had bids turned down earlier this week.

United chairman Eddie Thompson said: "We have turned down two bids for Barry as neither was anywhere near what we would be looking for," confirmed chairman Eddie Thompson yesterday.

"One of the offers in question was well off the mark the other was heavily dependant on top ups.

"In the latter case we told the club concerned that we were looking for a basic offer, not one related to whether they won promotion of other such things, and invited them to come back to us on that basis."