Sharp end

CLUBS IN CRISIS

Worrying times at Burnley, who are beginning to feel the aftershocks of their leveraged buyout nearly six years ago. When Alan Pace’s ALK Capital Investment group acquired the club in December 2020, they were virtually debt-free and, under the careful chairmanship of Mike Garlick, enjoying a fifth consecutive Premier League season. Two promotions and three relegations later, the Clarets are mired in the lower reaches of the Championship and in £142 million of external debt, according to their 2024-25 accounts – while £81m is owed to the club from ALK’s investment arm, Velocity Capital, which borrowed against the club to fund the buyout; £94m is also owed in transfer fees.

Signs of discord are everywhere. New manager Nicky Hayen, who won the title in his native Belgium with Club Brugge in 2023-24, is under pressure after a dismal start and the chief executive James Holroyd recently left, not long after an initially heralded sponsorship deal with “trading ecosystem” Finotive One fell apart. Holroyd had previously worked at Manchester United and comparisons with the Glazers have inevitably ensued, especially as £9.5m in management fees has been paid out to the owners since the takeover.

“Burnley have gone from being one of the best-run clubs in the league to one of the biggest borrowers,” says Simon Jackson, chair of the Burnley Independent Supporters Association, the club’s biggest fan group. “Only Spurs and Everton, along with Manchester United, have more debt and they’ve got big modern stadiums [to generate revenue].” Unrest is beginning to grow at Turf Moor now the team’s yo-yo cycle appears to be breaking and though the club have trumpeted a recent increased capital injection into Velocity Capital, the debt mountain remains formidable.

Burnley’s owners have also stuck their toes into the murky waters of multi-club ownership with the acquisition of Espanyol, a tie-up that has pleased neither set of fans. “We’ve been told as long as the TV money remains we’ll be biggest priority but what happens when we’re not?” says Jackson. “We could go down.”

Comparisons have inevitably been made with Leicester City, who wait for a takeover bid that will take them out of the hands of the regime blamed by fans for their precipitous decline. A September 14 deadline set by the club passed without concrete offers being tabled. Scottish-Indian businessman Neil Lal has gone public with his four-person consortium, heavily backed by Indian investors, but the owners, the Srivaddhanaprabha family, reportedly want more than £200m, a huge sum for a League One club. Lal has cautioned against expecting any quick fix, putting the onus on increasing revenue while promising he has “a five-year plan” to get to the Premier League. Building up Leicester streaming services in India was one plan floated by Lal in an interview with Talksport.

Also linked with a takeover is the Saudi Arabian government official and boxing promoter Turki Alalshikh, who withdrew a bid to buy Derby in August. For their part the owners converted £8.5m of debt into equity last month but that’s a drop in the ocean compared to overall debts north of £100m.

Down in National League South, Ebbsfleet United are playing fixture catch-up after not being allowed to start the season due to ongoing tax debts as a takeover went through. Fleet were suspended from playing on August 6 because of a winding-up order issued by HMRC over around £150,000 worth of tax debts stretching back to April. Though the debt was swiftly settled two weeks later by the new owners – led by the Dublin-based businessman John O’Leary and fronted by former Carlisle manager Roddy Collins – it took until September 2 for the club to convince the league they had complied with all its regulations over their financial liabilities. Fleet also have a suspended six-point deduction in the event of non-compliance with National League “obligations”.

By the time they were relegated from the National League in 2025 Ebbsfleet were immersed in crisis under the ownership of the Kuwaiti Al-Humaidi family, whose grandiose plans for the area included a vast leisure park on the nearby Swanscombe peninsula and a 5,500-roomhotel. This all collapsed in 2023. Abdulla Al-Humaidi was declared bankrupt in November of that year, and in 2025 both Abdulla and his brother Dherar had been convicted in absentia in Kuwait of fraud and, in Abdulla’s case, money laundering. Around £200,000 was found to have been laundered through Ebbsfleet United.

The football club by this point was spiralling downwards to this summer’s crisis point. Plans for a rebuilt 8,000-capacity stadium on their existing Stonebridge Road site incorporating new homes and a hotel were blocked in July this year by the government over concerns about lead pollution and the threat to the nearby and safeguarded Robins Wharf. Fans can only hope a new era heralds steadier progress. Tom Davies