Daily Mail

Burnley on the brink

Club punched above weight for years but have fallen off pace under new US owners

- IAN HERBERT Deputy Chief Sports Writer reports from Burnley

There’s a lot of fresh paint on the approach to Turf Moor. The vast brickwork wall leading up to the stadium is immaculate matt black and set into it is a new sir harry Potts Way road sign, adorned with Burnley’s crest.

sir harry, who took the club to the First Division title 62 years ago this spring, would certainly have been pleased with that.

he would also have known a painting over of cracks when he saw it. Turf Moor glitters like never before under new American ownership, with glittering LeD advertisin­g screens, corporate boxes in place of a long, antiquated dining room and aquamarine turnstile gates.

But they are fielding some of the oldest starting XIs the club has known and the league table reveals the consequenc­es.

Bottom, no wins since October and their best striker sold to relegation rivals Newcastle. The Premier League’s smallest club stand on a precipice. Tonight’s match with Watford is postponed which leaves Burnley adrift at the bottom having played just two league games since the 0-0 draw with West ham on December 12.

The loss to Tyneside of Chris Wood feels like a breaking point and several sources suggest it is a direct consequenc­e of the financial deal which last summer delivered the club into the hands of Us consortium ALK Capital, led by former Wall street financier Alan Pace.

That deal involved the new owners taking out a high-interest loan, repayable from the club’s own resources, to buy Burnley from their main shareholde­rs Mike Garlick and John Banaszkiew­icz.

The shareholdi­ng reverts back to the former owners if instalment­s due to them couldn’t be paid, though that was not what they had in mind.

ALK insisted last night that all payments to Garlick and Banaszkiew­icz had been made and that the ongoing purchase of the club had no bearing on Wood’s sale. The 30-year-old had a £25million release clause. It has been suggested that the clause may not kick in until the summer, though the club deny this.

either way, Wood’s sale heightens the prospect of Burnley’s relegation even if Wood doesn’t kick another ball for Newcastle. some here feel that’s precisely why they bought him.

The structure of the takeover deal does not make new chairman Pace a popular individual around pubs like the royal Dyche, a few hundred yards from the ground, though the onfield struggles of a tired side have been coming for two years. In the days when the club were cementing themselves as a Premier League side, reaching the europa League in 2018 and reaping TV cash which took revenues to within £3m of Inter Milan’s, Garlick and Dyche ran Burnley together. When Garlick decided it was time to cash out and Burnley FC sales prospectus­es starting hitting mats, that relationsh­ip changed. Dyche (left) could apparently not even establish from Garlick what his transfer budget might be, let alone what kind of targets he might pursue. Things became so strained that all communicat­ion had to go through chief executive Neil hart. It was the sight of sheffield United spending £62m last season, compared to a lay-out of £17.4m, that stuck in Dyche’s throat.

As the brutally competitiv­e Premier League moved on, Burnley stopped. every member of the starting XI against Leeds on January 2 had been with the club in 2017. The average age of the starting XI that lost to huddersfie­ld in the FA Cup (31.63) was the oldest in the club’s 3,812 post-War games.

Ten players are out of contract at the end of this season, including James Tarkowski. Newcastle have discussed moving for him this month, but the defender is understood to be determined to see out the season at Burnley out of loyalty.

For all the suspicion, Pace has delivered something substantia­lly different in the transfer market. The silver lining of a season in which Burnley have scored just eight goals has been Ivorian Maxwel Cornet whose six goals have all been world class.

Cornet was the first player Burnley have signed from the Continent since steven Defour in 2016. It is thought that Pace travelled to Lyon to persuade the 25-year-old to choose them over hertha Berlin and that would certainly have been typical of the way he involves himself in every aspect of the club. Pace has moved his family into the ribble Valley after an initial period, posttakeov­er, when ALK executives took up residence together in a Lancashire property in lockdown.

Insiders describe a regime of relentless activity and meetings, with dozens of new faces and a seeming air of modernity — the Burnley women’s team’s games broadcast live on TikTok. It’s all part of Pace’s vision of Burnley as a global, innovative club.

But most of the senior executives who had helped preserve top-flight status were asked to leave by Pace, who for some unfathomab­le reason had no time for past achievemen­ts.

hart, now Bolton Wanderers chief executive, commercial director Anthony Fairclough and academy head Jon Pepper all left, along with the club’s technical director, media chief and head of ticketing. New academy director Paul Jenkins has influence in the ‘transfer committee’ Pace set up.

The challenge now is Burnley’s uncompetit­ive negotiatin­g position on wages, with £50,000-aweek the high end for them.

That is why Palace’s Christian Benteke is an unlikely replacemen­t for Wood. With Dyche unconvince­d by Championsh­ip options, including QPr’s Lyndon Dykes and Cardiff’s Kieffer Moore, the quest to replace Wood will not be an easy one. The club are also seeking a central midfielder.

Pace, who can be ruthlessly decisive, remains convinced that all will be well, even if the club are relegated.

Few seem reconciled to that. But where there is Dyche, there is hope. ‘he’s the one who has not changed through all of this,’ says one source. ‘he won’t let this go without a fight.’

 ?? PA ?? Sinking feeling: Burnley players are facing an uphill task to preserve their Premier League status
PA Sinking feeling: Burnley players are facing an uphill task to preserve their Premier League status
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