Last Player Switch Out The Lights

    Meanwhile, I have this clever chum who understands all about money and the things you can do with it. I don’t understand what you can do with money because I haven’t got any. My clever chum understands words like amortisation. It’s good having a chum like that. He chats about things like tangible assets as well. He knows about how to make it look like you’ve lost money so you can fiddle your taxes. Fiddle isn’t the word he’d use because he’s an expert and knows all the right words. But me: I’m just the man in the street so it seems a good word. Not that I’ve anything against people fiddling tax at all. Far from it, seeing as our smarmy, useless, politicians and millionaire cabinet waste what we give them anyway.
 
     The world around us has been chaotic these last few days with the riots, Eagles and Mears going, the plunging FTSE, unemployment, world recession, the euro crisis, general panic, kids that can’t read n write… real anarchy is only ever three meals away they say – should things really go belly up. You shouldn’t really laugh at anything to do with the riots; they were appalling, frightening and chaotic. But one woman who was collared climbing in to a shop said she was only looking for her aunty when she was charged. Even with all this going on, I still couldn’t stop thinking of Oliver Holt tipping us for automatic promotion. And then it turned out that Pato would be out for another spell. How much worse could it get?

     Much worse: next came the news that Danny Fox had been sold to Southampton. Not since the days of Bob Lord selling players every five minutes had there been anything like this if you included all those shipped out a few weeks ago.

 
    Anyway my chum sent me his thoughts on the £4million loss last season that Barry Kilby talked about.

     “Where’s all the money gone you ask? It looks to me like all the loans have now been paid back. If you factor in the millions owed to Modus creditors, the ridiculous wage bill and the bonuses, the few millions spent on the Turf etc, paying off Average Brian and then you can chuck in a clever bit of amortisation on those few tangible assets that you haven’t just refurbed, then you can make your bottom line look like you’ve lost a few bob.

     That loss can be carried forward against any tax liabilities in subsequent years when you can’t box clever with the figures, so the tax bill is lower than it otherwise would have been.
 
     ‘Nothing to see here’ would be my take on the situation. Businesses large and small do this sort of thing all the time.”

     My clever chum then went on to suggest that BK with the best of intentions was trying to manage our expectations with the news of the loss; but instead the manouevre didn’t quit work as expected as people got out the backs of their fag packets and envelopes, did a few parachute payment sums and predictably reacted with a man-in-the-street, puzzled-fan response – well where did all the money go then?

     And then whilst Mrs T was backing four winners at Beverley (yes I repeat four) all hell broke loose when the Board decided to sell Danny Fox to Southampton. Burnley, having already lost Eagles and Mears for understandable reasons, now incensed the majority of fans by selling Fox. It wasn’t that they felt that Fox was a stunningly good player or a crowd favourite, but simply they wondered just what was going on. The directors issued re-assurances about looking after the club, being custodians, keeping wages at a manageable level, balancing the books, developing a uniformed wage structure and streamlining the squad. The problem however was that it wasn’t so much a clear and deliberately planned statement of future policy and strategy, it was simply a reaction to supporter anger.
 
     At this rate of sale fans worried it would be down to the last 16 very soon. All of these would make sense if the club was about to topple over the financial edge but with parachute payments of £16million this current season, and two more of £8million, and all in addition to normal income; the decision to sell this particular player was utterly baffling. The statement revealed that it was an offer too good to refuse and there had already been mention of gathering a squad of young hungry players and clearing out the deadwood.
 
     But, despite further re-assurances that the policy was to bring in good young players who could be developed further, the result was a set of fans who simply saw this as a club that seemed utterly resigned to paring down the wages as quickly as they could, maintaining an average championship lifestyle, with the absence of any real, determined ambition beyond a mid-table position – if that.

     The arguments raged as to whether real inertia was setting in; was all of this severely over-cautious in view of future para payments; and more worryingly when would supporters begin to vote with their feet without at least one more credible incoming player, and some decent results.
 
     If the rumour of a £1.8million transfer fee was correct than the club had presumably banked approximately £3million as well as dramatically reducing the wage bill by the time of the Palace game. The Bolton deal allegedly involved delayed payments spread over three years otherwise BFC would have banked approximately £5million. Now then: I don’t know a lot about money, I’m just the man in the street, but it’s not rocket science that Bolton paying us the final million in three years time will be paying a sum of money that is not worth as much as a million this year. Who’s a clever Bolton then? It’s reasonable to assume that the one clear strategy in all this is to get rid of the high earners as soon as possible.

 
On one of the websites this post summed things up in the disgruntled corner:

     It’s not the actual sale of Fox that bothers me, he can be replaced; it’s the general trend that’s being set. Half a first-team squad shipped out and three in so far, two of them on loan. This in the second season of parachute money, our last big chance to get back into the PL. But instead of building a team we seem intent on holding a fire-sale of the players we do have. I bought an ST in the expectation of watching a team good enough to challenge for the top six at least, instead I wake up in the morning feeling I’ve been kicked in the stomach. If the fans are demoralised, then what are the rest of the team and the management feeling like? The club has a week or two to restore some credibility or this season could turn into a civil war betweeen the fans and the Board, with the players and manager having to bear the brunt of it on the field. This is no way to run a football club.

    In the other corner - including me - just about, I think. There was a smattering of opinion that suggested that yet again it was an offer that was too good to turn down; and applauded the new catch ‘em young and hungry policy, and this was exactly why Howe was brought in, and that he allegedly knew this when he was appointed. Howe, as ever taciturn and inscrutable, kept his thoughts to himself before the Palace game; but only a little while earlier did he not say that he had a team that only needed a few tweaks. One wondered if he would have used the word ‘tweaks’ after Fox went.
 
     Fox according to his own statement jumped at the chance and couldn’t get down to Southampton soon enough. The problem is that it is now reasonable to ask if any player at Burnley with real talent, potential or ambition, will particularly wish to stay at a club where in truth even the slimmest chance of regaining a Premier place is slowly but surely disappearing. Being a local lad with strong ties will only keep Jay Rod here for so long. We may well look back, in years to come, on this season as being the last realistic chance Burnley ever had of aiming for a Prem return.  After the game Howe said on radio that morale was low and there was the clear inference that the Fox sale was not manager lead.

     Meanwhile what a grand day out we had at Beverley Races starting with bubbly and a Full English in The Victoria Pub in Hornsea. It was Ladies Day. Imagine Ladies Day at Turf Moor (bad enough) and multiply this by 1000 (nightmare). This was a day of low cut dresses, ample bosoms and exposed thighs mostly covered with goosebumps on account of the rain and cold; there were big hats, frilly hats and silly hats, gowns by Oxfam, tottering heels, Pimms at £16 a jug, pink bubbly at £32 a bottle, terraces and steps awash with the stuff so much was spilled. How sweet to see these glamourous grannies and slick chicks in their finery and on their wobbly legs carrying bags of chips and pints of lager. Around us as the day went on more and more of them became quite legless with glazed eyes and slurred speech. Personally I hadn’t seen as many tits since I had a part time job in a milking parlour. It was a day when the men stayed generally sober in order to carry their women home.
 
     Mrs T stayed sober and came back £46 up. Your correspondent just had the one £10 bet on the horse that was sure to win in the fourth race. It lost, second last. Being a Yorkshireman I found that infinitely more depressing than the sale of Fox, Eagles and Mears. We returned to the Pub for pie and chips and I felt a whole lot better. This was only the third ever race meeting I’ve been to. At two of them it poured down and this was one of them with the downpour one part rain, one part Pimms and one part bubbly, shaken not stirred. Several of these dear ladies were unsurprisingly carried out on stretchers; near us one of them was so enormous it took 6 stewards to cart her away.  Her chums were equally blathered and too far gone to even notice her disappearance. Quite what the horses made of it is anybodies’ guess.

     Being over there we missed the goal-fest against Burton with Jay Rod’s four goals bonanza, the best scoring performance since 1996. But on TV we saw Bartley’s goof that led to one goal and Grant’s flap that gave them their equaliser. I always thought it was more effective to tip the ball round the post than waft it straight to the opposition. But that’s only a personal view.
 

     There was an eventual distraction from all the bad news when the Clarets headed for Crystal Palace. Not until the Thursday before the game was it felt safe enough to let it go ahead, such was the mayhem and destruction on the streets of London. With all the supporter unrest you wondered what the further reaction would be if Burnley were trounced. It wasn’t quite a trouncing but it was still a 0 – 2 defeat and a red card for Bartley. “It’s been a miserable afternoon for Burnley,” said commentator Phil Bird.

     To be honest it had been a miserable week.

Dave Thomas Aug 2011