ANDY KILNER 

Date and Place of Birth 11th October 1966 - Bolton   Transfers to and from Burnley youth from summer 1983 released - May 1986   First and Last Burnley Games Wrexham (h) - 1st January 1986 sub: replaced Peter Devine   Torquay United (a) - 4th February 1986 sub: replaced Alan Taylor   Other Clubs ---------------------------------------- Halmia, Vanersbores, Jonsereds, Stockport County, Rochdale (loan), Bury

Burnley Career Stats

Profile by Andy Ashworth

When Andy Kilner arrived at Turf Moor as a 16-year-old it looked as though we might have got ourselves a top player in the making.

Burnley, with Gordon Clayton as chief scout, had opted for an approach to do the bulk of the scouting at schoolboy level in the Manchester area. For former Manchester United goalkeeper Clayton it was his patch.

During the 1982/83 season we confirmed the singings of two Salford schoolboys who were breaking all records in terms of goalscoring. One of them pulled out of a move to Turf Moor in the end but Kilner arrived in the summer of 1983 to begin his apprenticeship.

He was a very confident youngster who had already represented England at schoolboy level and early in his Burnley career he pulled on an England shirt at youth level too, playing and scoring in a game at Ewood Park against Iceland which England won 4-0.

On the left that night, he and Franz Carr on the right terrorised Iceland and the sizeable Burnley following thought we'd really got a player for the future.

Kilner looked strong and he was certainly quick and had an eye for goal. He was being likened to Steve Kindon who had also started at Burnley as a left winger.

Unfortunately a broken leg playing for the 'A' team at Burnley put him out of the game for a few months and it was an injury from which he never fully recovered although, in his third season at Turf Moor, he did break into the first team.

By then he'd played some first team football during a summer move to Halmstad in Sweden and that Burnley debut came as a substitute on New Year's Day 1986 in a 5-2 home win against Wrexham. He started the next game but they were two of only five first team appearances for Burnley before he was released at the end of that 1985/86 season by Tommy Cavanagh.

He played in Sweden again after that, and Norway, and also played non-league football for such as Altrincham. But there was to be a return to league football for Kilner with Stockport County. Having recovered from a second broken leg he signed for them in 1990 and scored no less than 14 goals in 34 league starts as they won promotion from the old fourth division.

It was short lived, but he added short spells with both Rochdale and Bury before dropping out of league football altogether in 1992 and returning to non-league football.

There was one last part of his football career to come. Through another former Burnley player Kevin Glendon, he got involved with coaching at Bolton's community programme and then moved back to Stockport to carry out a similar role.

That led to manager Gary Megson offering him a job as centre of excellence director and incredibly, when Megson had just about had enough of chairman Brendan Elwood, it was Kilner who became the next manager in the summer of 1999.

For a while he had them in the play off positions at the top of the league that is now the Championship, but it collapsed and from sixth place on Boxing Day they had dropped to 19th by late April before a recovery saw them end the season a couple of places higher.

That's as good as it got for him and with money tight he was force to sell Tony Dinning to Wolves for £800,000 and Colin Cooper to Wimbledon for a million. He then persuaded Burnley to part with another million for Ian Moore.

There is only one inevitable end once on that course and Kilner was sacked just over two years into the job and was replaced by Carlton Palmer. It brought to an end his football career.