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It might only have been a small minority, but nevertheless it was significant. It was the first time that an undercurrent of dissatisfaction which had been tangible for some time was rearing it’s ugly head. A look around internet comment pages reveals alarming discontent amongst some supporters. It was detectable towards the end of last season, when frustration at a failure to maintain pre-season promise mounted and even led to Brad Maylett – as good a young prospect as the club has produced in recent years – receiving criticism from the stands so bad that Tony Livesey felt a need to write about it in the match day programme; now it has gone a step further, and a step too far. Some people, it seems, would like yet another period of upheaval at the club and wholesale changes at the top.
The trouble is, these people obviously haven’t thought things through properly. A look around Turf Moor on a match day at the efficient and well stocked snack bars on the concourses, a glance inside the match day programme, a browse inside the club shop, pay testimony to giant strides forward that the club has made during the Kilby era – before you start looking at the fare on the pitch, which is incomparable to the stuff Stan Ternent’s first Burnley team served up. Chuck in a more streetwise marketing approach, Burnley FC credit cards and the like, and progress is staring you in the face in whichever direction you chose to look. If you like, the club has moved on from being an old-fashioned corner shop to a sleek, modern supermarket. If a bit of personal service has been sacrificed along the way – which is undoubtedly the case – than that is the price to be paid for a better end product on the pitch.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a sports club at any level knows that it is much easier to simply be a rank-and-file member than it is to take on responsibilities. The minute you join any sort of management committee, the effort, time and hassle involved increases, whilst the rewards are minimal. When that responsibility involves the chairmanship of a first division football club, then it takes up a massive amount more time and effort, whilst the hassle becomes a bigger problem, and a further outgoing is added to the list – money. Barry Kilby has given several million pounds to our – his – football club, and although he is a wealthy man, there is a limit to what any man can give.
If, then, Barry Kilby cannot give the fans what they want, then how do we expect to see those aspirations realised? When Frank Teasdale finally got out, there was hardly a queue at the door to invest in the club. Aside from Kilby and Ingleby, there was not a single other serious bid, unless the joker known as Shackleton can be counted. That was at a time when football’s financial climate was markedly better, when TV deals still promised ever increasing rewards. Now the game is in crisis, it is difficult to see where interested parties will come from.
That is not to say that the board are whiter than white, or that there is no right for the fans to be disgruntled whatsoever. Some moves over the last couple of years look like mistakes with hindsight, with the massive increase in wage expenditure a particular example – even without the demise of ITV digital to precipitate a crisis, the next TV deal would have been far less lucrative, and a shortfall would have resulted at that time. The signing of Paul Gascoigne, at a time when ITV digital was beginning to look shaky, now looks ill-judged; equally, the 1 million pounds shelled out on Robbie Blake looks a disastrous mistake, given that Bradford’s parlous financial situation was an open secret within football. The PR department has made numerous gaffes into the bargain, whilst Andrew Watson has at times appeared out of touch with the fans.
Legitimate questions can be asked of the club’s current financial plight. Elsewhere in Clarets Mad, some rudimentary figures suggest that the club has, by cutting out transfer fee expenditure and by cutting several names off the wage bill, saved 3 million of the 4.2 million pound hole left by the demise of ITV digital. Given that other overheads will be lower at the moment – for example, very low interest rates at present mean that the club will save money on interest bills – the revenue gap narrows to under one million pounds. Barry Kilby has apparently put in another 1 million pounds out of his own pocket – so if we are not now at least breaking even, then some money must have disappeared down a black hole not wholly explained by ITV digital.
Into the bargain, the club felt able to offer Marlon Broomes a contract – so if money was available to bring one player in at that time, why couldn’t it have been spent elsewhere to plug serious deficiencies within the squad at the time? For instance, with Broomes gone, couldn’t the money have gone on bringing Marlon Beresford to the club? It is difficult to believe that Beresford would have been a more expensive signing than the former Blackburn defender, or that the club’s situation has deteriorated further in the past month with no obvious crisis to trigger it and thereby rule out a signing at this stage. And anyway, why the hell was the priority to bring in a defender, when central midfield as well as between the sticks represented more pressing priorities for strengthening? It does seem that there have some odd choices taken by the Turf Moor hierarchy, including Kilby and Stan Ternent, over the past couple of months.
And even now it is possible to raise cash, as various other clubs have shown with imaginative solutions to the crisis. Norwich City, for example, have launched a share issue from which they expect to raise £750,000. Perhaps Burnley should be trying something similar – offering fans the opportunity to gain a stake in their club. It would give those fans who currently vent their feelings by abusing their chairman on a Saturday a chance to put their money where their collective mouth is, and give those who are simply mystified as to why we have been hit quite so hard by the current difficulties an opportunity to help solve the problems.
That said, Burnley fans did not respond overwhelmingly when the club piloted a loan scheme to help fund the redevelopment of Gawthorpe. Nor did we beat a path to the door when credit card and banking schemes were launched. But surely with the club needing money, supporters would dig deep.
If they won’t, then they certainly have no room to criticise Barry Kilby, the biggest philanthropist the club has ever known. As a decent man who supports the club as fervently as any of us, he deserves better. He is not flawless; but then, a perfect human being does not exist. And the club does need to look at ways to raise the cash to ensure that the club avoids becoming embroiled in a battle to avert returning to the nether regions of the Football League from which we escaped two years ago. But a time like this, a club needs solidarity, a common purpose to unite fans, players, directors and the rest of the club. Anger and abuse will get us nowhere.
