There is no doubt Garlick made mistakes, we all do, I wouldn't say I was a huge supporter of his either, same goes for Kilby (which will no doubt rile many on here).elwaclaret wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 3:28 pmOf course Garlick would have seen his value plummet as Burnley were relegated. If he couldn’t find buyers in the Premier how are investors going to pay the same for a Championship club?
You say Garlick would have re-invested… based on what? He was trying to offload the club before relegation, had he not sold what on earth makes you assume he would start the re-building process and re-invest? He wanted out not to have to wait another few seasons… and there was no guarantee he could summon another gene for manager.
You seem to forget by the end Garlick was invisible and clearly had decided his concern for Burnley Football Club had changed.
The takeover was not ideal, the debt was not ideal; but I do think your vision of life under Garlick is a little blinkered by your genuine concern about whether Pace et al takeover. Where as before Pace arrived I thought the club was in a real mess and was heading one way. Just differences of opinion, but there is no crystal ball or omnipotent view.
Was he invisible at the end? I think that you will find it difficult for an executive Chairman (which is what he became when Dave Baldwin left the club and Neil Hart was promoted to Chief Exec - an appointment that was big mistake in my view) to be invisible in the running of the club
As for re-investment if the club had not been sold and had been relegated, i base that on everything I have described about the Garlick model. Plus, to sell the club it would be easier in the Premier League (and as we know that was difficult enough).
The debt is not a past tense issue by the way - it is very real and very expensive to support and here is the only debt I am referring to is that the club (not Pace) has with MSD (courtesy of Pace and Garlick the two key negotiators in the takeover).
It is interesting to note that all the while Pace and Co have borrowed all of this money (my estimate is £144.5m) free of charge and interest with no known time constraint for repayment, though there is a theoretical notion of recall. All the time the club is not only losing the ability to utilise that money for its own purposes but seeing any future repayment devalued by inflation (which we all know is at generational highs). In essence the club is paying interest to lend its owners money.
We believe Pace still has debt to the original sellers and wants to buy their remaining shares, history suggests that it is the club which will facilitating the £21m + £20m expenditures involved. If as speculated, this transpires to be funded by the club the total loans made by the club will then be in the £185m. Recently there has been suggestion that Pace is looking to refinance the MSD loan, it seems reasonable to believe that the additional costs associated with that will be placed on the club, as to what the funds generated will be used for is open to question, but we can only hope that it will be of benefit of the club not the owners.
At the time of the takeover. I said that the money being used to service the loan would have been better spent on hiring the appropriate executive talent to drive the club forward, particularly as the club had the funds to do finance revenue generating initiatives after 5 years of infrastructure investment that did not contribute to revenues. The club was indeed in potentially catastrophic mess, due to the breakdown in relations of its two key individuals, but it was and is unreasonable to lay that on just Garlick.
I agree there is no crystal ball or omnipotent view, which is why I pose questions about the future and share the details of what my opinions/interpretations of the past are based on. These have been discussed deeply by a number of people with the appropriate knowledge and skillset (which in many cases is greater than my own), which I have welcomed, and on appropriate occasion and with clear demonstration of their reasoning had led to a change in my understanding and point of view.