Inside Burnley’s Turmoil Under Alan Pace’s ALK: Sponsor Fiasco, CEO Exit and Debt Fears

The frustration at Turf Moor had been building for months. Earlier this month, Burnley surrendered a lead against Bristol City, extending a miserable home run that has left them without a league victory at the stadium for almost a year. This time, the anger from the Clarets supporters finally spilled over.

A chorus of boos rang around Turf Moor, while striker Armando Broja was involved in a heated exchange with an unhappy supporter in the car park. Nobody escaped the backlash, least of all owner and chairman Alan Pace, who faced the loudest chants.

Pace could be targeted again if Burnley struggle against Derby on Saturday, when they return home sitting at the bottom of the Championship. The club have managed only one league win in the past 328 days, with their last victory coming in February. When Burnley last played in this division, they stormed to promotion with 100 points. That success now feels like a distant memory.

The concern extends beyond the poor performances and the danger those results have created. Supporters are also demanding answers to a growing series of questions—answers the club has rarely provided.

Why did Burnley wait until relegation to dismiss Scott Parker? Why did the club take 71 days to appoint Nicky Hayen, leaving them to begin pre-season without a manager? Why was top scorer Zian Flemming sold on deadline day without a replacement, and why did Burnley receive only £20million for a player who scored 11 Premier League goals during a summer in which top-flight clubs spent £3.5billion?

There are also questions over the decision to abandon shirt sponsor Finotive One, which described itself as a ‘trading ecosystem’, just before the season began. And now, after that upheaval, chief executive James Holroyd has left his role after little more than 12 months in charge.

When Pace completed his takeover in December 2020, he promised an ‘exciting journey’. That description has certainly proved accurate in an unexpected way. The turmoil has unfolded alongside a leveraged buy-out similar to the structure used at Manchester United under the Glazer family. Burnley, once debt-free and holding £80m in the bank, was left with £13m in cash and £142m of debt, according to the latest accounts.

It is little wonder the atmosphere is becoming increasingly toxic.

Holroyd’s appointment had initially been regarded as a major coup. He brought considerable experience, having spent 14 years at Manchester United after a further 14 years with adidas.

A former colleague told Daily Mail Sport that Holroyd was ‘incredibly serious and incredibly methodical about his work’. Yet after nearly three decades at just two companies, he had departed his third employer after only slightly more than a year.

Burnley confirmed Holroyd’s departure to Daily Mail Sport, saying he had ‘decided to step down to pursue a new challenge’. He remains involved with Burnley In The Community, but no longer has responsibility for the club’s commercial operations.

‘It’s been an honour and a privilege to serve this great club,’ Holroyd said. ‘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 that the costly and embarrassing Finotive One episode contributed to Holroyd’s departure. Burnley ended the sponsorship after only 42 days, despite a high-profile launch involving investor and former NFL star JJ Watt, England cricket great Jimmy Anderson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The club also replaced purchased shirts free of charge.

Burnley declined to explain why the agreement ended, although it is understood that Finotive One failed to make its payments.

Sources also told Daily Mail Sport that tensions had developed in the working relationship between Holroyd and Pace, with the Finotive One affair further damaging the situation. Both sides ultimately concluded that separating was the best outcome.

Holroyd’s duties are being covered on an interim basis by former head of HR Amy Wells and Nathan Kavanagh, the club’s director of strategy and transformation.

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.