There’s a lot of fresh paint on the approach to Turf Moor. The vast brickwork wall leading up to the stadium is immaculate matt black and set into it is a new Sir Harry Potts Way road sign, adorned with Burnley’s crest.
Sir Harry, who took the club to the First Division title 62 years ago this spring, would certainly have been pleased with that.
He would also have known a painting over of cracks when he saw it. Turf Moor glitters like never before under new American ownership, with glittering LED advertising screens, corporate boxes in place of a long, antiquated dining room and aquamarine turnstile gates.
Burnley boss Sean Dyche faces a daunting challenge to keep the club in the Premier League
But they are fielding some of the oldest starting XIs the club has known and the league table reveals the consequences.
Bottom, no wins since October and their best striker sold to relegation rivals Newcastle. The Premier League’s smallest club stand on a precipice.
The hugely significant home match with Watford is in danger of being postponed after Burnley requested it to be called off due to injuries and Covid. It leaves them adrift at the bottom having played just two league games since the goalless draw with West Ham on December 12.
The loss to Tyneside of Chris Wood feels like a breaking point and several sources suggest that it is a direct consequence of the financial deal which last summer delivered the club into the hands of US consortium ALK Capital, led by former Wall Street financier Alan Pace.
Chris Wood’s sale to rivals Newcastle heightens the prospect of Burnley’s relegation
That deal involved the new owners taking out a high-interest loan, repayable from the club’s own resources, to buy Burnley from their main shareholders Mike Garlick and John Banaszkiewicz.
The shareholding reverts back to the former owners if instalments due to them couldn’t be paid, though that was not what they had in mind.
ALK insisted that all payments to Garlick and Banaszkiewicz had been made and that the ongoing purchase of the club had no bearing on Wood’s sale. The 30-year-old had a £25 million release clause. It has been suggested that the clause may not kick in until the summer, though the club deny this.
Either way, Wood’s sale heightens the prospect of Burnley’s relegation even if Wood doesn’t kick another ball for Newcastle. Some here feel that’s precisely why they bought him.
Ten players are out of contract at the end of this season, including defender James Tarkowski
The structure of the takeover deal does not make new chairman Pace a popular individual around pubs like the Royal Dyche, a few hundred yards from the ground, though the on-field struggles of a tired side have been coming for two years. In the days when the club were cementing themselves as a Premier League side, reaching the Europa League in 2018 and reaping TV cash which took revenues to within £3m of Inter Milan’s, Garlick and Dyche ran Burnley together.
When Garlick decided it was time to cash out and Burnley FC sales prospectuses starting hitting mats, that relationship changed. Dyche could apparently not even establish from
