Matt Scrafton's verdict on Burnley's 2-0 defeat to Arsenal
Alan Pace would like Burnley to be contending for European qualification within the next five years.
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The Clarets chairman made the claim during the club’s recent fan forum, where he was quizzed about Burnley’s ambitions and what he wants to achieve going forwards.
In the here and now, the priority is to remain in the top flight and build from there, but Pace isn’t willing to just stand still.
Burnley’s ambitions under Pace’s ownership
“We haven’t changed at all,” he told supporters. “Keeping The Faith is probably more of our comment to you.
“The highs and lows are hard to watch, because it’s all dependent on a style, or a win or how things go. But nothing has changed and I won’t change from that perspective.
“We have a plan, we’re executing on that plan and we continue to adjust as things happen to us or as things don’t necessarily go the way we would have liked them to.
Pace has repeatedly stated his ultimate aim with Burnley is to win the Champions League (Photo by Matt McNulty/Getty Images)placeholder image
Pace has repeatedly stated his ultimate aim with Burnley is to win the Champions League (Photo by Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
“At the same time, I watch the sentiment within the community and within the fanbase and even at our games and it goes like a rollercoaster. I can’t change that.
“All we can do is keep giving the resources to the team to do their best and where needed, we will make adjustments where needed.
“I know what my definition of risk is and how I think about it, but it’s very different than other peoples’. We should always have the ambition where we’re always reaching and always trying to find great talent.
“We have tremendous ambition. My ambitions are so far out I probably have to hold them back a little bit, otherwise people will think I’m dreaming. But the reality is we have to marry that with the pragmatism and what we can do.
“There’s the financial situation we’re in. I can have all the ambition in the world, but I can’t get Messi to come and play here.
“That’s not to say I don’t want us to play in the Champions League some day. I know people will make fun of that forever, and as I’ve said multiple times it may happen long after I die, but if that ambition doesn’t exist in the culture of the club, the community and the organisation, then what’s the point?
“You have to have that ambition and that has to be the culture, but it’s our job to look at it practically and work out how we get there. How do we get people to say: ‘hey, we deserve the opportunity to play in Europe’, or ‘we deserve that more than once every 20 years’. That evolution is really important for us.
“So that hasn’t changed, we still have that. Whether it’s a three-year plan like Vincent [Kompany] mentioned or other people have mentioned, we do things in three-year models as I talked about with our recruitment process.
“You have to have a plan and a benchmark status, that’s how we have to think about it. But it doesn’t mean we don’t continue to evolve.”
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What needs to happen for Burnley to become an established Premier League side?
“Thinking in the three-year model, our hope is that we’re always pushing forward.
“I would love for us to think that if we can always stay in the Premier League, that we should always be thinking to what is the next step.
“If we stay up, as I expect us to, I do not think we will be relegated this year. I think we have a fantastic squad that you’re just starting to see come together. If you watched us against Liverpool or other places, you saw a different cohesion within this team and a different love between them, if you will. That’s something I feel very strongly about.
“Our ambition should be to aim for that mid-table range and that’s a range for me, that’s 14th to 8th. We should be there over the next two years to be able to say we’re really beginning to establish ourselves.
“I know that other clubs are also trying to do this, that’s why it’s so, so hard. But we have to be pushing to try and be in that place so that, as this club has in the past, starts to be able to have the opportunity to get into Europe.
“It may not be in my lifetime that I ever see this club play in the Champions League, but we’re going to have that ambition.
“Maybe we get a little bit of luck like some clubs have in the past and we get there, but we should be able to be in that place where we’re competing for Europe. If it takes us five years or six years, I don’t really care. But I care we have the ambition.
“Now, what do you have to do to actually get there? That’s the tough part. We had to think slightly differently with last season’s promotion compared to the previous promotion. You have to think stylistically, this time versus last time, you have to think about the manager and what they want and how they play. What tools do they need?
“It’s like having a completely different car from one time to another and then hiring a driver and a mechanic crew that can actually fix and run it and improve it to compete.
“We always have to be thinking a slight step ahead. Can we find that player that’s going to get us to the next level, that’s going to help us bring us there from a cost perspective? Or can we develop a player to get us there? Those are two very unusual things we have to spend a lot of time working on.
“We either identify the talent that already has that experience, or bringing in talent and helping them grow.
“If things happen too quickly, then that’s where things become a bit too problematic for us where, if we don’t have what we need then maybe we need to go and find another tool.
“But our ambition is within the next five years to be a contender to make it to Europe when the opportunities arise.”
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