good points made in the article there.
I just wonder about the fans who want premiership football tomorrow with Burnley......would they be prepared to pay the price?
Whilst football in the Championship is competative and I believe provides good entertainment for the prices we pay I just wonder how many of us would be able to afford the prices cited at Chelsea amongst others of £80.00 for one adult and one child....
I would dearly love to see Burnley progress, but what would be the real cost? not pnly to us as fans, but to the club if things didnt work out?

Now ive had time to sober up and calm down.

We were poor today , We lacked something in every department ! Players might have been told that "that's it" and there future lies away from turf moor . That's the view i got Jordan/Caldwell just two who seemed to be going through the motions .

But after reading the flood article in the programme , it made me feel a little better , The fact that he isn't going "Gun ho" into the transfer market and is going to allow the youth set up to continue its fine work in bringing through players that might just might make the grade!

The Sheff utd team was nothing special , But they had three front men that makes ours look poor by comparison ( Lafferty -the future/ Blake - almost over the hill/ Ade-trap further than most can kick it comes to mind ). They had Bettie Sharpe and Hulse . Not to mention Stead/Shelton who didn't even get on.

We have a lower reaches of a Championship squad , and our final league position will show that . If we are to compete with the teams above we need to be looking at a much bigger squad . with as much quality as possible and the rest made up of HUNGRY young players , The sort of player who would give his right arm just to wear the claret shirt !


Rant over .. PS great review



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:04:13:07:45:41 by BBC 2.

The sky has fallen on our heads . Promisis and promisses to bring in some good players ! Will they be realised ? Wait ,watch and see .

Interesting summary of the season FC.

Its 32 years since we last appeared in the top division and Colin Waldron played his last game for the club that season, other notable players to leave or finish playing that year were Casper, Docherty, Collins and Morgan. Without quality players in the side we went down the leagues and almost to oblivion.

I dont see it any differently today, without quality players in the side we will at best achieve what we have achieved since the turn of the century, survival in this division.

The problem is that we have been succesful at standing still in terms of survival and supporters have commented that just staying in this division is success, but while we have achieved that for 8 years, the game and the teams in the top division have moved on, so that while we get excited about a £20 million pot to rebuild a team, the other lot talk about £40 million for a player.

We as supporters may already have accepted that we are where we deserve to be and that we shouldnt be playing boom or bust with finances to get back to the promised land. The youngsters being developed may very well be the lifeblood of the future of the club, but how many have we seen come to fruition over the years only to be sold to balance the books? Are they being developed as a commodity to be traded for hard cash further on down the line?

Who knows whether £20 million could build a team to get us promoted to the top division, it would be something I would like to see again before I'm done with, we have after all waited 22 years for it to happen.




.............
Ex Aintree Naps Champion
Ex Naps Champion
Cheltenham Naps Champion

The team on show against She Utd just isn't good enough to keep us in this devision never mind take us to the
Premiership, These players need to be shipped out ASAP and replaced with players that want to pull on the Claret shirt we all love. Who these players are I don't have the answer to.

Gabor Kiraly
Jensen
Alexander
Caldwell
Jordan
O' Connor
Ade
Gudjonsson
Mahon
Steve Jones
John Spicer
Garreth O'Connor

---

Let's hope that Coyle is ruthless with the cull and manages to get players of real quality in.



...jelly baby?

Surprised this thread hasnt prompted more responses




.............
Ex Aintree Naps Champion
Ex Naps Champion
Cheltenham Naps Champion

I honestly feel that unless we strengthen key areas next season we will be in danger of going down, Because, as mentioned above, if this is the best we can offer then we will struggle.

There was no fight or passion on Saturday and that is no better than when Cotterill was in charge.

I think the fact that Chris McCann was MOM on Saturday said it all really

Quote:

colinwaldron
Surprised this thread hasnt prompted more responses

I've said where I think we're going on another thread but it's not the sort of thing most fans want to keep reading about, so I'm keeping my mouth shut for the time being.

BC
Prediction League Champion 2006/7
Fantasy League Winner 2007/8

I think Foreverclarets peice deserves some discussion though, it hits on our perception of how we see the club, were we want it to be and how achievable that really is. In some ways it kind of reinforces the "premiership" aims that we have to hang on to and sets out a goal to be aimed for, whilst at the same time demonstrating how "unachievable" that really is as we cannot compete financially, we cannot however be seen to just simply give up either. Its one hell of a dilema




.............
Ex Aintree Naps Champion
Ex Naps Champion
Cheltenham Naps Champion

" Its one hell of a dilemna "

You are not wrong there CW,
The rich just get richer and the rest well they just struggle on.

I like you have been very fortunate to have seen us play in the top flight, even back in the good old days it was always a struggle financially to keep going, we were,even then little old Burnley, but what we did have as you rightly mentioned was a constant stream of good players coming through the system, we had a real eye for spotting talent, it was a lot easier though in getting players in as in those days they wanted to come to Burnley, we were regarded as a good training club where we looked after the young uns, I remember Tommy Docherty saying to Mick that Burnley was the club to go to.

Remember the League winning side, none of them commanded big fees and none of them came from League clubs, can you imagine that today, no chance. Most of our players then were good enough to sell on for a good fee, unlike today whereby we get one or two that can be sold on. How much would we get today even if we sold the whole squad £7/8 million? if we're lucky.

I like many other supporters would love to be back playing at the top level, but I am also a realist, as I believe we really do not have much of a chance of reaching those dizzy heights, finanaces today just don't allow for it.

The board can be as upbeat as they like about this project or that project, about their aims to be a Premiership side in 5 years or 10 years, but I am sorry unless we have a Roman or a Jack coming in to bank roll us, I am sorry to say it's not going to get any better for us, in my eyes it can only get worse.

On other threads some have already stated it is getting too expensive for families to watch games on a regular basis,it will only get more expensive season by season. It's OK saying that season ticket prices are frozen, but some can't afford them now let alone if we ever got to the Prem.

Someone said on another thread that who cares if the Corporate box price went up, well those guys that subscribe to them do care, and it gets to a point whereby even those people will look at what they get out of it and say enough is enough, and we all have to remember BFC make more money out of Corporate entertainment than anything else.

No I am sorry, it's nice to dream but I reckon we need to dream on, Premiership football is a long way off.




SIMPLY THE BEST

As I said in another thread, I'm not bothered about Premiership football, A good Championship side would go a long way to start with.

Quote:

Chris McCann"
For the team we have I don't think the position shows how good we are. We should be up challenging in the top six at least with the squad we have,

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:04:14:19:17:49 by Turfite.

This might seem a bit controversial, defeatist even, but what I feel is lacking at Burnley at the moment is some real excitement. OK, we are established in the Championship but mid table mediocrity is not putting bums on seats and never will.

We need to be involved in promotion battles to generate some interest and, assuming there is no benefactor coming to our rescue, I doubt we are likely to be involved in getting promotion from this division in the foreseeable future and we are going to find it harder and harder financially to remain competetive at this level.

So the best thing for Burnley, imo, is to become a yo-yo club, getting relegated from this division and then bouncing back a season or two later. Perhaps a good run in this division for a season or two, then relegation and bounce back again. That way interest will be generated and the gates will certainly increase in the promotion seasons even though we'll be a division lower.

It's got bloody boring in this division so let's have a change, some new teams , new challenges. Would it really be so catastrophic for the club to be relegated ?

BC
Prediction League Champion 2006/7
Fantasy League Winner 2007/8

Quote:

BC
It's got bloody boring in this division so let's have a change, some new teams , new challenges. Would it really be so catastrophic for the club to be relegated ?

Yes it would ,for us to go down would be catastrophic ( IMO)

We need a `breakaway` league.(stuff the Prem)
North/South split
Maximum wages throughout.
No agents.
Summer football.

I didn't see BFC during the heydays, but I watched em from the 70's. We were a yo-yo club then.....but there was excitement & promise.

The game of today is nothing like the game of even 25 years ago & we (& 70+ other clubs) have next to no chance of ever competing with the big boys now. We are falling further behind season on season & it aint gonna get better.

We & football need a reality check, or the game we love, inc BFC, will not survive 30 years.

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It could be catastrophic for us to stay in this division imo BBC2. We can't afford the transfer fees, we can't afford the wages. We are losing £4m a year and at the moment we are dependent on the goodwill of a couple of Directors to keep us afloat. We don't own Turf Moor or Gawthorpe anymore and if our benefactor/directors pull out then admin would surely follow rapidly.

The club is in a precarious financial position (imo) and I don't think it's an option to continue meandering along in this division with fans losing interest and falling gates.

Something has to change to generate interest, it's not going to be promotion, so it's got to be at the other end.

Why would relegation be catastrophic, we've survived it before and a dozen clubs each season are relegated, usually without any catastrophic consequences. We are punching above our weight at this level, let's have a go at our own level for a bit, have some success and get the gates back up.

BC
Prediction League Champion 2006/7
Fantasy League Winner 2007/8

I can't believe any fans would want to get relegated to the division below. What gurantee is there that we'd be any good in that division anyway we could go all the way to the bottom again.

Sorry , i should have continued the post.

No its not catastrophic for us to stay in this division , We are still getting ten thou plus almost every game. We will not pay over our wage bill ( and hats off to the board for that ). We are producing talent three players have come from nothing to be valuable assets , That never happened while we were below the 2nd division since the money flooded in to football.

If we went down ,we could end up like Port Vale, big club in the potteries ( About the same size as us don't you think ?) .

Forest who have more money than us spent more than us and are struggling to get out.

Going down is no guarantee of bringing impetus and new revival to burnley, Neither will stagnating doing nothing on the pitch, But while i say all this we have more internationals now than we have had for 20 years ,We have a manager who wants to play the perfect way, Give him a chance to bring in some new faces ( Frees for all i care ) and see how we think then.