Buying Burnley Football Club

[quoonbeatz]

I agree that a lot, including myself, wanted a takeover.

....

What I did not see is a single fan saying they wanted us to take on some debt or put ourselves in a worse financial situation during a takeover.

It was never likely that a takeover at Burnley would involve a sugar daddy, it was always going to be about increasing our risk appetite. The two parties who showed interest in buying the club certainly didn't have untold wealth to splash about so I don't really get what people were expecting.

[cblantfanclub]

I don't think that is really correct and there is nothing happened at Burnley that fans influenced. If anyone wanted Garlick out it was Garlick, not the fans. He'd been trying to sell the club for some considerable time, probably about four years.

Absolutely correct.

[dsr]

It was never likely that a takeover at Burnley would involve a sugar daddy, it was always going to be about increasing our risk appetite. The two parties who showed interest in buying the club certainly didn't have untold wealth to splash about so I don't really get what people were expecting.

Some people were expecting someone who wants to run a football club as a hobby. (With or without sugar-daddying.)

Some people were expecting an American consortium to want to use Burnley as a profit making enterprise, probably by buying (relatively) cheap, investing the cash in new players, taking a salary, and selling at a profit. The expectation was that the money would go from the investors to Garlick.

What no-one was expecting was that all the money in the club, plus another £60m high interest loan, would be paid to Garlick. I think most people assumed that the large cash pot that Garlick had built up, would stay in the club. Few if any expected our net cash position to go from £50m in the bank to £50m overdraft overnight.

[quoonbeatz]

Not really my point, dsr.

The club was largely operating at its limit, financially, under Garlick. We turned a profit mainly as we didn't buy many players. Only really two ways to move things forward: either someone throws a stack of money at it or we change the risk profile (I.e. debt). It doesn't really matter what form the debt takes as we were always going to end up with some, as long as there's a plan and it's manageable.

Was quite amusing how people were very "We need a takeover!" then when it happened they were all "not that kind of takeover."

[Rileybobs]

My favourite is ‘what was the point of the takeover’, like some people actually thought they should personally benefit from one business acquiring another.

[quoonbeatz]

Same people who are tweeting Pace to tell him they want to shag him were were tweeting about how it was same old same old Burnley lol, two days into the window.

All any modern fan wants is at least two players for over 10m quid apiece every window and they're appeased.

[NewClaret]

It was never likely that a takeover at Burnley would involve a sugar daddy, it was always going to be about increasing our risk appetite. The two parties who showed interest in buying the club certainly didn't have untold wealth to splash about so I don't really get what people were expecting.

There was certainly no expectation of a sugar daddy on my behalf. And as exciting as one might be initially, this board would be riddled with questions of when he’d get bored and sell up. I wouldn’t fancy BFC being a billionaires plaything. Having said that, I hadn’t quite anticipated it being funded by debt or using the clubs cash reserves though, particularly given MG’s continued insistence that he was seeking the right long-term investor.

I am hoping there is more to unfold. MG seemed like he had the best interests of the club at heart and Pace seems very confident about the structure and availability of funds going forward in recent interviews (which I’m inclined to believe him since he has so far come good on his promises).

Either way, we can always look back and say we got the better of the two options that seemed to present themselves.

[dsr]

Not really my point, dsr.

The club was largely operating at its limit, financially, under Garlick. We turned a profit mainly as we didn't buy many players. Only really two ways to move things forward: either someone throws a stack of money at it or we change the risk profile (I.e. debt). It doesn't really matter what form the debt takes as we were always going to end up with some, as long as there's a plan and it's manageable.

Was quite amusing how people were very "We need a takeover!" then when it happened they were all "not that kind of takeover."

If any financial advisor suggested that the best thing a solvent business could do was to spend £100m to pay someone else's debts so that it had a better risk profile, they wouldn't be a financial advisor for long.

Before player purchases and sales were taken into account, we were making about £30m per year operating profit. We could have moved that forward by spending the profits on players; giving away the profit to get a more risky risk profile was not commercially sensible for the club.

[quoonbeatz]

Not sure how what I thought was a pretty clear post has confused you so badly dsr but there we go.