Business as Usual

The fact is Burnley have always run at a loss. Always will do. Burnley could set a budget which reflects their natural support as a second tier club: about eleven and a half thousand. If they did, then barring exceptionally cute management, they would be relegated – and gates would drop accordingly.

Thus runs the great insolvable conundrum which faces just about every club outside the Premiership. Quite simply, the income Burnley can expect to generate from supporters is less than the costs of running the club, whatever level the club play at.

In the sixties, before the era of the superstar footballer really arrived (ironic to be talking of this in the week that the prototype, George Best, should sadly pass away), Burnley could just about compete. Yet even then, we sold the odd player to stay ahead of the game. In the seventies, we sold regularly to survive. For much of the eighties, we had no-one to sell, and we almost went bust. Over the last fifteen years, we’ve been funded largely by loans and donations, plus the odd sale.

Don’t pretend that Burnley are alone in this boat. In 2004, barely two-thirds of league football clubs anticipated turning in a profit – mostly in the Premier League. Pre-tax losses across the Football League as a whole amounted to 67 million pounds, according to the 2005 Deloitte Football Finance Report. To spell it out, that is 67 million pounds distributed between 72 clubs – an average loss of, you’ve guessed it, close to one million pounds a year.

The Deloitte report makes fascinating reading. It actually paints a rather optimistic tale of a corner turned by most league clubs. That message is a very similar one to that which Barry Kilby sought to paint to Burnley fans a week ago. There might be losses, but in spite of that our finances are healthier than they might be. Our wage bill is back under control, and performances on the pitch don’t really seem to have been affected.

I’ve been quick to criticise Barry Kilby in the past. I’m sure I’ll criticise him again. But face it, the man is in an unenviable position. He can’t, short of some astoundingly creative accounting, produce out of a hat a set of figures worthy of exuberant celebration.

So he has two choices: be honest, or suppress the bad news as best he can.

If he took the second option, he’d be criticised for not communicating with supporters. He’d also be breaking the law, given that, as a limited company, the club are compelled to publish accounts.

If anything, the only criticism that can be levelled at Kilby – and the rest of the clubs financial management – is a failure to go far enough in explaining these figures to the ordinary claret in the street. Given that our wage bill is now down to a level which sits far better with our turnover, perhaps we could do with further information, directed to the masses, explaining why exactly we managed to spend nearly a million and a half more on ‘operating expenses’ – whatever they may be - in the last financial year than in the previous.

True, Burnley’s PR machine is frequently a bad joke, with out chief executive in a starring role. His attempt to justify the unpopular surcharge at the AGM by reference to the improving profile of customers at Turf Moor is nothing short of embarrassing.

But the honest truth is that, whatever his shortcomings, Barry Kilby is a genuine Burnley fan with Claret and Blue in his blood. Not everything he does is right, yet nor is every move he makes deserving of a barrage of abuse. Like every chairman Burnley have ever had, he seems to become less of a hero and more of a villain with every passing day. And I’d lay money down that the day after Barry Kilby calls it a day, many of his snipers will hastily revise their opinion upwards.

Better, ultimately to accept the shortcomings of Burnley Football Club. A club with big aspirations, but light on the resources necessary to achieve them. In the real world, we are unlikely to ever turn in profits big enough to underwrite Championship football. For us, like three quarters and more of other football clubs, true financial stability will be virtually unobtainable – unless, by happy chance, we find ourselves in the land of plenty which remains known as the Premiership.