Burnley fc

Though former owner Mike Garlick must take his fair share of the blame, Burnley's new hierarchy are gambling with the club's future.

Tensions remained in the wake of the change of ownership. Tarkowski is among nine players at the end of their deals and able to leave, with little incentive to stay given salaries will be automatically reduced. The club was for some time without a chief executive, technical director and head of academy. The four-year contract Dyche signed last September was described as a "marriage of convenience" by one insider. There was no immediate explanation for why Burnley had taken the money as a loan now, rather than wait 12 months for Newcastle to cough up the rest of the cash. Everton and Aston Villa are already doing battle for the signing of defender James Tarkowski, who is out of contract this summer. However, there remains some confusion over how much a club with a proud history of retaining cash reserves has in the bank as it stands. For a club now facing life without the Premier League TV money that currently accounts for 90 per cent of revenues, there will also be concern over interest rates for the debt within the club. Pace, a former Wall Street financier who led the US consortium ALK Capital, has described the exact details of the takeover as confidential. The £170million deal secured by ALK Capital in December 2020 loaded the club with eye-watering levels of debt. To some disappointment there would be no ambitious signings that summer to build on the record arrival of the previous season, Chris Wood. However, as he brokered a sale, the club's ability to bounce back from the Championship became a good deal more brittle than it had been after previous Premier League relegations in 2010 and 2015.