Alan Pace insists he’s “comfortable” with Burnley’s financial position and has told fans they have nothing to worry about.
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As a result, the club has been loaded with debt and significant loans have had to be taken out.
While Burnley will continue to remain in a healthy position while they stay in the Premier League, there is a concern what could happen later down the line should they suffer relegation to the Championship again and not bounce back at the first attempt, given the obvious decline in TV revenues.
During Tuesday night’s fan forum at Burnley College, Pace opted against going into specifics when asked about the club’s finances, but did provide some words of comfort.
“I’ve said it from the very first start since I came in, we won’t talk about that. That’s just our position,” the club’s chairman explained.
“What I can tell you is that we’re very comfortable with where we are and I always have been comfortable with where we are.
Burnley chairman Alan Pace (Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)placeholder image
Burnley chairman Alan Pace (Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)
“My name is on the door. I don’t run and hide from it, but I’ll use the example when I first came in. Imagine I’ve invited you over to dinner and invited you into my house, that doesn’t mean I’m going to invite you into my bedroom, okay?
“That’s just something where we draw the line and there’s a whole bunch of reasons for that. We don’t have to get into that here and now, but that’s deeply personal.
“You should know we take super, super seriously how we think about those things, always have and always will. I wouldn’t stand in front of you if I was trying to hide. I’m not someone living on an island somewhere else. You see me regularly, you can probably stop me in Tesco, but I’m not going to get into anything…I will talk about whatever has been published in the accounts, but I’m super happy. I’m super comfortable.
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“Guys, there’s nothing you should worry about, okay? I’ve shown you two times now, if we go down...I heard it the first time I came in: ‘if you go down, you’re going to ruin this club because you’ve borrowed all this money’. But listen, we went down and we’ve come back twice. I hope we never have to do it again, but please take some comfort in that we’ve learned how to do a few things and manage a few things.
“But from a business perspective, I’m not necessarily going to share every interesting anecdote to how we do what we do, because there are still lots of other people that would like to replicate it, I promise you that. There are also lots of things we can learn from.
“But I can tell you we’re very comfortable with where we are and I have no worry or fear about where we are.
“We just do things a little bit differently to how they’ve been done in the past for other people. I’d love it if the club had zero debt, but in the current modern game of football, I’ve said it from the outset, I’m not a billionaire so that’s not going to happen.
“We’re going to figure out how we can have ambition, how we can grow without building a £200m stadium and charging prices you can get at our friends down the road somewhere else. That’s just not what this community is.
“We’re just not going to ever be able to create that revenue stream, so we have to figure out how to do it differently.
“If you want to have a separate meeting and discuss what’s happened in the past, I’ll be happy to talk about those. But forward-looking is a little bit hard, but I’m very comfortable with what we have.”
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