Burnley face financial and personnel problems even if they beat the drop

For Mike Jackson, there are - understandably - some things that are not worth overthinking. “You wouldn’t get out of bed in a morning if you thought about that,” Burnley’s caretaker manager said when asked about the financial implications of Burnley going down. “I try not to. I try to keep it level and keep it real.”

With the oldest team in the top flight and nine senior players out of contract, Burnley are likely to face a tough enough challenge this summer even if they manage to preserve their Premier League status for a seventh successive season and entice an attractive permanent successor, such as Vincent Kompany, to Sean Dyche as manager.

But, much like a kid who has come hurtling off his bike and almost dare not peer down at his leg to survey the extent of the damage, plenty of Burnley fans are struggling to bring themselves to look beyond the next four days and what the prospect of relegation might mean for the club. A fire sale of the best players, including Maxwel Cornet and Dwight McNeil, will probably not be the half of it.

We got a glimpse a fortnight or so ago of the pain to come if Burnley do not successfully navigate their games away to Aston Villa on Thursday night and at home to Newcastle on the final day of the campaign on Sunday and stay up at the expense of either Everton or Leeds.

The Lancashire club’s accounts for last season did not, on the surface at least, make for overly grim reading.

But it was the details in the small print that will terrify supporters and make you wonder how far and deep the anticipated swingeing cuts will have to go to offset the impact of any relegation. Jackson has been enlisting the help of the club’s psychologist, Simon Clarkson, as he bids to pull off an escape act that will doubtless guarantee him a lifetime of gratitude from the Burnley faithful but the problems could become overwhelming if the coming days do not go to plan.

The immediate concern would be the £65 million loan Burnley’s American owners, ALK Capital, took out to help finance their leveraged takeover 18 months ago. Although not due for repayment until December 2025 if Burnley remain in the Premier League, a “significant proportion” of it will have to be repaid this summer if the club go down, with another payment to follow if they do not win promotion back at the first attempt.

It is by no means the only concern, though. Burnley’s cash balance for 2020/21 fell from £80.6m to £50.2m after ALK used £37m of the club’s money to complete their buyout. Despite that sharp drop, £50m is still a healthy sum and raises questions about why Burnley needed to take out another loan - borrowed against the £25m sale of striker Chris Wood to Newcastle in January - unless much of their cash reserves had already been used elsewhere over the past 12 months. Burnley are not due to receive the second instalment of the Wood fee from Newcastle until February next year so took out a £12.5m loan with Macquarie Bank to effectively claim all the money upfront.

Bear in mind that Premier League television money accounted for 90 per cent of Burnley’s £115m turnover last season and you get an idea of why chairman Alan Pace, ALK’s managing partner, has stressed it is “very important” the club stay up. A first year parachute payment of around £42m and relegation clauses built into players’ contracts would help to soften some of the blow and Burnley had already responded to a revenue decline brought about by the Covid pandemic by slashing the wage bill 14 per cent to £86m last season. But such measures alone will not be enough if the club drops and raises the prospect of players departing en masse.

Cornet has a £17.5m release clause in the five-year contract he signed after joining Burnley from Lyon for £12.85m last summer and could be one of the first out of the door. Another winger, McNeil, who was courted by Everton and Aston Villa last summer, has two years left on his contract and could command the highest transfer fee in the squad. England goalkeeper Nick Pope has 12 months left on his deal and will doubtless want to remain in the Premier League, particularly with the World Cup finals looming at the end of the year, and it is hard to see £12m January signing Wout Weghorst hanging around. It would be little surprise if he, like Cornet, also has a release clause in his contract.

Would the exits of those four be enough? In the event of relegation, there was a rather chilling message in the latest accounts stipulating that, if the club did not raise as much money as projected from sales, “further player trading” could follow.

Nathan Collins, Josh Brownhill and Charlie Taylor would probably be next on the list of saleable assets but, with so many players due to become free agents next month, the squad was already in urgent need of renewal.

And this is the problem for the next manager, even if Burnley do avoid the dreaded drop which, naturally, is focusing everyone’s minds at the moment.

With an average age of 28 years and 363 days, Burnley have comfortably the oldest average starting XI in the Premier League. Dyche had been arguing for three years that the club needed to rebuild but successive transfer windows did not yield the evolution required and the problems have stacked up. Dyche said last week, in his first interview following his sacking, that he felt an ageing squad was “losing our edge”.

Captain Ben Mee and his central defensive partner, James Tarkowski, are out of contract at the end of the season, as are Jack Cork, Ashley Barnes, Aaron Lennon, Erik Pieters, Matej Vydra, Phil Bardsley and Dale Stephens. Cork and Barnes have options for another year. Tarkowski, at 29, is the only one of that group under the age of 30 and he seems certain to leave even if Burnley stay up.

Kompany, the former Premier League title winning captain of Manchester City who is currently manager of Anderlecht, is thought to be Pace’s preferred option should relegation be avoided. But you have to wonder why Kompany would consider staking his reputation on an old team drilled in a style of football that runs counter to his own philosophy and with no certainty that there would be enough money to substantially refashion things given ALK’s borrowings.

Of course, they are not questions to concern Jackson, who has given Burnley a fighting chance after being catapulted into the eye of the storm following Dyche’s departure. After recording three successive wins in the space of 10 days against Southampton, Wolves and Watford, Jackson and Burnley suffered a setback with defeats to first Villa and then Tottenham. Despite sitting 18th and trailing Leeds by a point, though, survival remains in Burnley’s hands given that they have a game in hand on their Yorkshire rivals. Even a point at Villa on Thursday night would be welcome given their vastly superior goal difference to Leeds.

“People judge Burnley as Burnley,” Jackson says. “It’s not Everton, it’s not Leeds. You’ve got three teams who are doing everything they can - fighting, growing through ups and downs, [it’s] how they react. I think everyone is going through the same thing.”

Sleep must be hard to come by at the moment. “I’m fine with that - a couple of whiskies, a couple of gins!” he joked. “No, I’m fine”.