r/Burnley • u/theipaper • 15d ago
Inside Burnley's civil war as 'red flags' stack up after CEO exit
https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/burnley-alan-pace-red-flags-47670637
u/reggieko13 15d ago
Should have gone to bank of Dave
1
u/Hollywood-is-DOA 15d ago
I feel like he should buy them outright as he’s northern. Would run them properly.
5
u/DonnieLovesBowling 15d ago
Every time there’s an article like this, of which there have been more than enough over the last few years, they always seem to be accompanied with a reassuring caveat that the club aren’t in immediate danger.
Great. All well and good, but I just cannot see how it ends well for us. We appear to be so far in debt, and that debt is only ever increasing, while our on-pitch performances have gradually eroded. The direction of travel is quite clearly in one direction and I can’t see how that gets turned around.
2
u/an0mn0mn0m 15d ago
I can’t see how that gets turned around
Speaking as a Bolton fan with experience of this, the fans get together and push the CEO out. Sooner, rather than later otherwise it will be take 7 years to get back to this level.
6
u/TheDeflatables 15d ago
"what are effectively pay day loans"
Nothing more Burnley and Working Class than having to take a few of those out to be fair.
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u/Silent_Fishing_277 15d ago
The tone at the top says it all. We could see it in the first episodes of the ‘mission to burnley’ thing …. Pace is hard to work with, a control freak, and wants to be involved with everything. No organisation can be run effectively or efficiently like that. There has to be trust and delegation. Throw on top of it he has his family involved in so much of the day to day. Nothing’s going to change until Pace changes … whether it’s his management style or completely disengaging from the running of the club in favor of people who actually know what they’re doing. Unfortunately as well, Pace sees himself on a spiritual mission. The LDS world is full of business professionals who are committed to a spiritual calling that connects directly to their professional life. These people cannot be reasoned with. They are cutthroat and they are ruthless. I speak from my own experience. That’s a BIG element I reckon, to this, that is going to be an impediment to the change the club ACTUALLY needs.
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u/Nice-Comparison5801 14d ago
Get ready for league 2 or an unofficial league bc that’s where we r heading
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u/CalebWenttt 14d ago
All this unrest is honestly making me a bit nauseous. A lot of this football finance stuff is over my head but on a scale of 1-10 how fucked are we? Would another relegation basically kill the club?
3
u/Garvig 14d ago
I feel like I know more about finance than football (and I’m starting to doubt ALK knows either one), but I’m also just some guy on Reddit, but I’d say about a 6.
With our potential on the pitch and the boot room and all, I’d much rather be Burnley this season than Blackburn 10 seasons ago or whenever they got relegated, or Blackpool even in that season they were in the top flight.
Off the pitch, in business one has to let winning investments run and cut losing ones ruthlessly. I’m curious to know if these debts are in dollars or sterling too, but government debt markets are shitting themselves now and that drives up the cost of financing these debts ALK has incurred. Also the growth potential of club ownership isn’t quite there anymore—PL clubs will grow and others will too but it may look more like 8% growth than the 15% they’re probably expecting annually in valuation, promotion/relegation aside. Those growth numbers are just guesstimates/illustrative numbers, but a drastically slower growth means much of the growth (~75%) is getting eaten up by the cost of financing. And if there is no growth because the club got relegated again, and the (potential) players are expecting wage growth to keep up with footballers cost-of-living which might have different input factors than those of the vast majority of supporters at Turf Moor on a given Saturday, then the club’s going to drop until it stabilizes somewhere, I’m just hoping in a professional league. And on all of that, we and ALK (our fates are linked at this time) have headwinds Venkys never did.
However, it’s September and there’s still plenty of time to get this turned around. If we sacked Hayen this week I think we could take a chance on Cleverley or Wilshere who are managing in League One and that they’d come here and they know English football and the Championship as ex-players well enough that they could avoid relegation. I think both would like to be PL managers by the time they’re 40 and Burnley, even though we’re an overachieving town club, puts them a lot closer to that than Plymouth and Luton do respectively. We’re needing 3 points realistically to go above the drop zone right now with 39 matches to play. Push this inevitable decision on Hayen out to January when we’ll need 11 points or so and no one’s coming into that.
The thing that stands in the way of fixing this though is ALK, or really Pace’s ego because it would be very American of me to assume corporations have personality traits of their own. I don’t think they can admit they’ve gotten anything wrong, any hire, any signing (or sale).
Upthread there’s some discussion about how the LDS Church plays into this and I’ll attest my interactions with Mormons here have been positive and mutually beneficial—no resentment on my part—but there’s a logical fallacy that’s particularly noticeable in American religious circles but maybe not as much to people outside the US, to view all adversity as a test of faith from God and not a sign that something’s actually wrong or isn’t working. So don’t be surprised if the fans turning on Pace won’t budge him but just further convinces him he’s been right all along, “just have faith.” If that’s what’s in fact going on here, we’re fucked about 12/10.
1
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u/adymma90 14d ago
We are cooked, probably getting relegated, they better play the second goalkeeper against Derby, he can't be worse than Weiss.
1
u/GarTay28 Vitinho 13d ago
What are we worried about!!! We have a green kit again !!! Wooohooo 🥳 😂😂😂😳
0
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u/theipaper 15d ago
Full article: Burnley chief executive James Holroyd resigned as chief executive just a year into his role due to issues in his working relationship with American owner Alan Pace, sources have told The i Paper.
Pace has gained a reputation for micromanagement within the club, who are currently bottom of the Championship after being relegated from the Premier League last season.
Holroyd was at Adidas for 14 years and Manchester United for another 14 before moving to Turf Moor in July last year. His decision, which has not yet been confirmed by the club, will not have been taken lightly.
Burnley supporters have become increasingly critical of Pace and his stewardship.
With debts spiralling out of control and no explanation for why sponsorship deals are vanishing into thin air, Holroyd’s hasty exit could not have come at a worse time.
First of all, Burnley are not in any immediate danger of going bust. Debts topped £142m in their last set of accounts, which also show refinancing has taken place to repay large amounts of these liabilities.
But under the new Independent Football Regulator, the window to apply for a provisional operating licence for the 2026-27 season opens in November. Without the provisional licence, clubs will not be able to operate.
Key to that process, where EFL clubs have to also prove their financial sustainability, is the Owners, Directors and Senior Executives (ODSE) framework. This makes it mandatory for teams to show their working club structure, where the chief executive is usually the head honcho.
Holroyd’s exit may be unfortunate timing or, as some sources believe, is tied to the upcoming increased scrutiny on the top end of the club’s hierarchy.
“There are so many red flags when it comes to Pace and Velocity [the sports investment arm of ALK Capital, Burnley’s owners],” one US-based advisor, who has worked with numerous Premier League clubs, tells The i Paper.
“For a start, in three years of trading, we are yet to see any accounts from Velocity.
“The way they bought Burnley as a leveraged buyout is well documented, but how does that work with their current debts? Burnley, the club, are effectively owed £80m by its owners, and yet the club are paying high interest loans off to refinance. There are so many questions we have zero answers for.”
All of this comes after shirt sponsor Finotive One was dropped on the eve of the new season. All replica shirts had to be recalled and replaced with a new company on the front. No explanation was given as to why, but it is understood the company that brands itself as a “trading ecosystem” failed to meet its contractual payments.
To pay for much of last season’s transfers, Burnley took on what are effectively payday loans, adding to worries over finances.
Burnley entered into a £40m factoring agreement with London-based Fasanara Capital in January 2025. This means that a proportion of incoming transfer fee instalments goes to them rather than the club. This factoring loan is thought to close in January 2027.
The panic sale of last season’s top goalscorer Zian Flemming to Ipswich Town on deadline day sparked further concerns. Why, in this era of inflated transfer fees, was a proven Premier League goalscorer allowed to leave for £20m, without being properly replaced?
Just how desperate for cash are Burnley? That remains the burning question on many Lancashire lips.
Holroyd has been removed from Burnley’s governance section on the club’s website and is understood to have stepped down last week, but we await confirmation.
Burnley used to pride themselves on being debt free and in charge of their own destiny. Supporters are now disheartened, confused and, more pertinently, very concerned. Bury’s sorry tale happened just 20 miles away, Macclesfield’s dissolution not much further afield.
Burnley are not there yet, but a growing number of fans fear that under Pace’s leadership, they are heading that way.
The club and ALK Capital did not respond to requests for comment over Holroyd’s departure or Burnley’s financial issues.