Inside Burnley’s shocking decline under Alan Pace’s ALK: The humiliating sponsor fiasco, why highly-respected CEO quit the Clarets, club staff aghast at changes behind the scenes and the ‘ominous shadow’ of debt leaving supporters terrified

The threat of mutiny has long been simmering away at Turf Moor. And earlier this month, as Burnley threw away a lead against Bristol City, extending a barren run at a ground in which they have now not won a league game in nearly a year, the fury of a despairing fan base finally boiled over.

Boos thundered around the stadium. Clarets striker Armando Broja got into an angry confrontation with a disgruntled fan in the car park. No one was immune to the ire, and certainly not owner and chairman Alan Pace who bore the brunt of the chanting.

You expect he may well suffer it again if Burnley flounder against Derby on Saturday as they return to Turf Moor rooted to the foot of the Championship with one league win in the last 328 days and none since February. The last time they were in this division they won promotion with 100 points. How far away those days feel now.

Not just because of the dismal football they are having to endure, and the precarious position that’s put them in, but for the ever-growing list of questions for which they are so rarely given answers.

Why did the club wait until relegation before sacking Scott Parker? Why did they wait 71 days to appoint Nicky Hayen and start pre-season without a manager? Why did they sell top scorer Zian Flemming on deadline day with no replacement lined up, and why did they only receive £20million for a player with 11 top-flight goals in a summer when Premier League clubs spent £3.5billion? 

Why did they have to drop shirt sponsor Finotive One, a self-titled ‘trading ecosystem’, on the eve of the season? And why, after all that, has the club’s chief executive James Holroyd just left his position after little more than a year in charge?

Pace promised an ‘exciting journey’ when he bought the club in December 2020. That’s certainly one way of putting it. And all of this against the backdrop of that leveraged buy-out, one akin to Manchester United under the Glazers, that used Burnley’s own money to turn a once debt-free organisation with £80m in the bank into one with £13m cash in the coffers, according to the last accounts, and £142m of debt casting an ominous shadow.

No wonder it’s starting to turn toxic.

Holroyd’s arrival was seen as a huge coup for the club, a man steeped in experience having spent 14 years at Manchester United following another 14 years at adidas.

One former colleague described him to Daily Mail Sport as ‘incredibly serious and incredibly methodical about his work’. A man who spent the best part of three decades working for just two companies was out of his third one after just over a year.

Burnley confirmed his departure to Daily Mail Sport and said that Holroyd had ‘decided to step down to pursue a new challenge’. He will continue to work at the club as part of their Burnley In The Community department but is no longer involved on the commercial side of the business.

‘It’s been an honour and a privilege to serve this great club,’ said Holroyd. ‘There’s a pride and a resilience that runs through Burnley that you feel from the moment you arrive. That’s what makes this such a difficult decision, but it’s why I’ll keep supporting the incredible work being done by BFC in the Community.

‘I want to thank Alan and the board for the opportunity to serve this club, and the staff and supporters for making me feel truly part of the Claret family.’

Daily Mail Sport understands the embarrassing and expensive Finotive One fiasco, where the club dropped their shirt sponsor after just 42 days despite a star-studded launch that featured investor and former NFL star JJ Watt, England cricket legend Jimmy Anderson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and replaced all purchased shirts free of charge, played a part.

Burnley refused to confirm the reason why the sponsorship ended but it’s understood Finotive One failed to meet its payments.

Sources also told Daily Mail Sport that difficulties had arisen in Holroyd and Pace’s working relationship and the Finotive One debacle did nothing to ease matters. A parting of the ways was decided to be best for all concerned.

Holroyd has been replaced on an interim basis by Amy Wells, who was head of HR, and director of strategy and transformation Nathan Kavanagh.

Sources suggested Holroyd found the chairman too hands-on, a complaint echoed to Daily Mail Sport by other former members of staff, with one saying employees often felt they were not trusted to get on with their job.

Most of the staff who were in place when Pace’s ALK took over are no longer there, many leaving within a year, leading to a sense among those close to the club that they cannot recognise the one they once knew.

‘These were local people, where the club meant everything to them, and one by one you saw them leave,’ said one former member of staff.

There’s a feeling that the sense of community and togetherness that forged a spirit able to take Burnley into Europe has been eroded.

Pace has spent money, and appointed two good managers in Vincent Kompany and Parker, but fans struggle to connect to an ever-revolving door of players they see as mercenaries as the club bounces between the Premier League and the Championship. None of them they see as personifying the famous ‘Legs, Hearts, Minds’ motto emblazoned on Sean Dyche’s request on a wall at the training ground.

The overwhelming sense among the fanbase now is that the last two promotions have papered over the cracks and the fissures are growing too wide to fix.

Manager Hayen is already under pressure and facing questions about his future and whether he’s been told defeat by Derby could spell the end. ‘Not at the moment,’ he said. ‘They didn’t tell me this can be my last game. It can be, I don’t know.’

Kyle Walker addressed staff this week to tell them that the players were doing everything they could to fix things. 

So much of it, though, comes back to the money. The £142m debt from the most recent accounts for the 2024-25 promotion season, the interest on bank loans of up to 12 per cent, the £36m of net interest payments over the last five seasons when there was none before the takeover. 

The £9.5m taken in ‘management fees’ under the current ownership, ones that jumped from £1.5m to £4m after relegation. The transfer debt of £95m that was just £3m four years ago and takes the club’s total gross debt to nearly a quarter of a billion. The near £40m sale of incoming transfer fees to London-based firm Fasanara Capital. And why Velocity Capital, ALK’s investment arm, still owes the football club around £81m.

Under the previous ownership, made up of local businessmen, Burnley were famously debt-free, cash rich, and one of the most profitable clubs in Premier League history. Dyche worked miracles on a budget as he established the Clarets in the Premier League and took them into Europe. 

Now, according to respected finance blog Swiss Ramble, Burnley’s external debt of £142m last year was the fourth highest in England behind only Tottenham and Everton, who have built new stadiums, and the Glazers’ United.

‘There’s a few of us who have been querying the leveraged buyout model of Alan Pace for a few years,’ football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Daily Mail Sport.

‘It’s reliant on Burnley regularly being in the Premier League for the broadcast cash flows, when its matchday income is only seven per cent of total revenue.

‘The concerns are that the club has £75m of short-terms loans, £30m of long-term loans, has sold players but has sold the transfer instalments from the sales and owes £94m in unpaid transfer fees. Under those circumstances they will struggle to borrow more and, if they do, will have to pay punitive interest rates.

‘It therefore could come down to whether or not Alan Pace has (a) the cash and (b) the desire to provide funding himself.’

In response to questions about Burnley’s financial position, the club told Daily Mail Sport that the latest set of accounts, due to be submitted to the Premier League by October 31, ‘will give a more accurate picture of the current position’.

Those accounts are expected to show a fall in both debt and how much is still owed by Velocity to the club.

The management fees, meanwhile, are understood to be payments to non-full-time Burnley employees, such as consultants, for their services. The increase is thought to be due to performance-related bonuses.

The worry for Burnley, especially after such a torrid start to the campaign, is what happens if they don’t go up again this time. They are only getting two years of parachute payments instead of three as they came straight back down last season.

The £35m settlement Everton were forced to pay for breaking financial rules in the season Burnley were first relegated was a lifeline, but it remains uncertain whether the Clarets will ultimately receive it after the Toffees appealed against the decision.

Concerns have been raised, too, about whether Burnley will become a side dish as Pace and ALK expand their multi-club model. They have already purchased Spanish side Espanyol and are believed to be eyeing up Club Leon in Mexico.

In the most recent meeting between the club and its independent supporters association, the group was told, according to the latest newsletter, that ‘while EPL TV money is still available to the club, we will remain the priority’.

‘The question does remain what happens in the circumstances where the club is not quickly re-promoted to the EPL and the parachute money comes to an end,’ the newsletter continued.

Burnley have not been outside the top two divisions in more than a quarter of a century. They may well no longer exist had they not beat Leyton Orient on the final day in 1987 to stay in the Football League. Supporters worry that their status as a modest town club, surrounded by big cities, will make it even harder to fight their way back up.

‘There’s a feeling that we could be the next Leicester,’ said one source. The deeper fear, of course, is whether they could also become another Bury and be the first Premier League team to go bust.

The club, for now, are not in immediate danger of that and plans are said to be in place should the worst happen. But the longer Burnley remain outside the top flight and, heaven forbid, fall through the divisions, the more difficult it will be to keep on paying the piper.