Mike Garlick in The Times

[GodIsADeeJay81]

We maintained PL status for so long because we did the exact opposite of what ALK are trying to do. We had a whole club ethos of being hard to beat, defending as a unit with big target men.

We invested in playing assets based upon character and work rate. We also invested in the best in the Championship (Wood, Arfield, Taylor and Barnes etc.) and players of good character from PL squads that no longer required them or had been relegated (Westwood, Lowton and Cork).

We invested in mavericks that good break lines but had the ability to play for top PL sides but didn't because of age, injury or just being too difficult like Defour and Barton).

And we played the same way so everyone knew exactly what they were doing and did it to the best of their ability to such an extent that every team that played us had to work harder than they normally worked, compete more physically than they normally did and break down a side you could draw lines between the two banks of four.

There is no other way for a small club to punch above their weight over an extended period. Garlick knew it and sold out to a team that intended to rip up the plan and try to employ an approach that hasn't worked since the maximum wage ended.

We're hard to beat now
Arfield was free, Barnes was £400k
We were skint
Wood was a major investment I agree
Taylor wasn't hugely expensive was he?

Dyche and Garlick pulled off some great deals to keep us ticking over and we did well out of them

[Rowls]

We're hard to beat now
Arfield was free, Barnes was £400k
We were skint
Wood was a major investment I agree
Taylor wasn't hugely expensive was he?

Dyche and Garlick pulled off some great deals to keep us ticking over and we did well out of them

On the other hand, we reportedly missed out on the following players because of quibbling at prices:

Matty Cash
Kelvin Phillips
Ivan Toney
Harry Kane
Hakim Ziyech
Brennan Johnson

I’m only going off press rumours so it can’t be verified but we were reportedly close to signing all of the above under Dyche and lost out due to quibbling over a million here and there. The pattern was real.

The list above is just off the top of my head too. There’s bound to be others we missed out on.

Obviously a million pounds is a huge sum but we had £40 million in the bank when he left and we signed Dale Stephens.

If Sean Dyche had been back just a little bit more we could have seen players if the above calibre at Burnley and if that had happened there’s every chance we’d never have been relegated.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Moaning about Kane when Levy is the toughest negotiator in English football is something else

[Rowls]

Moaning about Kane when Levy is the toughest negotiator in English football is something else

What I heard is they'd agreed to sell him for around £3 million when he was about 19.

Dyche advised the board he was worth it, the board didn't want to pay that much for such a young player.

I don't know how true this is, what the nuances are and what Garlick's version of event would be. None of this is the point though, just as Daniel Levy's negotiating is a red herring.

The point is that the pattern repeated itself: we missed out on countless targets for want of relatively tiny sums.

If we'd spent that little extra we could have recouped it many times over with the players mentioned above AND perhaps still been in the top half of the PL like, for example, Brighton.

[Big Vinny K]

What I heard is they'd agreed to sell him for around £3 million when he was about 19.

Dyche advised the board he was worth it, the board didn't want to pay that much for such a young player.

I don't know how true this is, what the nuances are and what Garlick's version of event would be. None of this is the point though, just as Daniel Levy's negotiating is a red herring.

The point is that the pattern repeated itself: we missed out on countless targets for want of relatively tiny sums.

If we'd spent that little extra we could have recouped it many times over with the players mentioned above AND perhaps still been in the top half of the PL like, for example, Brighton.

You could choose to believe things that you say yourself you don’t know whether they are true and there appears to be zero evidence.

Or you could just look at the facts that we did actually manage to enjoy a far longer period in the PL than anybody expected and on a smaller budget than I’m pretty sure any other team in the league during the equivalent period.

As for Brighton during the period we were in the Premier League their owner subsidised them for more than half a billion pounds of his own money and under Dyche / MG we still managed to out perform them.

As we saw last season spending a “bit” more or indeed a lot more guarantees nothing.

It’s easy for supporters to say we could have spent a couple of million more to secure a player when it’s not their money. But the main real point here is from the outside we have no idea of the actual details of the potential transfers both in terms of the fees wanted and the wage demands (or indeed whether the player actually wants to come to Burnley)

[Rowls]

You could choose to believe things that you say yourself you don’t know whether they are true and there appears to be zero evidence...

I've already acknowledged that I don't know the full ins and outs.

You make a lot of good points. Mike Garlick isn't a devil or a saint. He's a bloke who did what he could. He did some great things and also made errors.

But the pattern I referred to is clear and indisputable: We consistently lost out on targets over relatively small amounts.

There is a LOT of very solid evidence this is true, but we supporters don't have any concrete proof.