Burnley News 24/7Writer: turfmanphil 
Date:Friday September 12 2008
Time: 7:28AM
UK time is: 04:05:55
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Kilby Wants to Sell Turf Moor Back to Club
A few seasons ago back in 2004 one of the most emotive debates amongst Clarets fans was underway as the Club revealed they would be selling Turf Moor to a consortium involving our Club's Chairman, Barry Kilby.
Kilby bought Turf Moor and the training facility at Gawthorpe for £3 million via a company called Longside. This company then leased the ground back to the club under a 99-year lease agreement
The move was necessary to get out of a financial hole at the time and avoid crippling capital repayments to the bank and help wipe out the club's debts.
Many Clarets fans accepted the inevitable albeit with heavy hearts and concerns as the deal was struck. Other Clarets saw the deal has a stroke of genius especially since our Chairman, a Clarets fan himself was involved in the deal
Barry Kilby has however now revealed that he is determined to sell the ground back to Burnley FC as soon as possible.
'It's a responsibility I'd sooner not have,' Kilby told BBC Radio Lancashire.
'As soon as the club gets some surplus cash it can buy it back and I'll be delighted when it does.'
Barry Kilby then also revealed the Club were in a position to buy back the ground after receiving £3 million from the transfer of Kyle Lafferty to Rangers.
'If we'd spent the money from the Kyle Lafferty transfer they could have bought it back there and then. But the decision was to reinvest in the team,
'We don't have to go into the Premier League.There's a figure of about £3.2m at the moment which would buy it back, so it's not a massive amount of money.'
This will be encouraging news for a number of the original Doubting Thomases especially since we would not have to get promoted from the Championship.
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Your Comments
I was one Clarets fan that always supported this move back in 2004 and didnt share the concerns of some. I put my faith in Barry Kilby, a true Clarets fan himself and never thought he would do the dirty on the club. Now putting things into context we would appear to be just one major transfer fee away from buying back the ground and either way I think it proves this decision was always the right one to take for the health of the club. I will preidct that Turf Moor will be back in the hands of the club by the time the new redevelopment is completed if not before
turfmanphil
You can't go far wrong owning your own ground
Gixerstu
Read between the lines and you may get a result!
There's a LOT more to this story than meets the eye and it could be construed as one of two things. Nail in the proverbial coffin, or a step in the right direction. Depends on your take really.
Parrotclete
What ever happened to the plan of selling it to the fans? I thought it was a good idea at the time seen as the whole itv deal went up the swanny so if it got as bad as debt collectors coming round they couldn't sieze the ground.
Also begs the question who they going to sell next to pay for it?
ruane
Are you referring to the Clarets Trust's original aim of buying back the Turf? If so that was never practical, once the numbers were crunched so we changed to the more realistic aims of buying shares in the club to have more of a say whilst helping the club at the same time. The Trust now have 75 shares (£15000 worth) and we aim to get that up to 100 and keep in the Top 10 of non-director level share holders.
I dont think we will sell players just to buy back the Turf, but like Lafferty, top clubs might want to buy our players in the future for ££££ and we wont be able to stop them. If we sell a player for £3-6 million it might be tempting for the club to buy back the assets and that could happen sooner rather than later
turfmanphil
What you think that the fans ever had a chance? Nay!
Look at the facts. Kilby and unrest and Coyle blaming the fans.
It's a poor man's version of Newcastle. Except they are in more debt!
Parrotclete
Not sure what you mean there Pete,could you expand a little?
turfmanphil
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