New Era says Kilby

The Clarets held their 125th anniversary celebratory dinner recently and chairman Barry Kilby has also been giving out some positive messages that augers well for the future.

News had also filtered through about the change in the organisation at the club with Brendan Flood and Barry Kilby now taking a more 'hands-on' roll with former Chief Executive, Dave Edmundson taking on a new role as Head of Strategic Development

Director Brendan Flood, who joined the Board last year, would now be working to help boost revenues with the Chairman in order to try and compete with our Championship rivals on a financial basis.

'We're going to be more hands on and (myself and Brendan) think we can run it together,' Kilby explained.

'I'm formally going to be here for a set number of days at a time.

'I'm relishing it. It's a little bit different in terms of responsibilties but we'll see if we can drive our revenues up.

'I was reading today that the average turnover for the Championship is £16-£17 million. Ours is £8 million. It needs some bridging.

'Our players' wage bill last season was £5 million - Birmingham's is £22 million.

'It's an uphill struggle but I'm quite proud that we've had seven seasons now in the Championship. For 20-odd before that we were down in the dumps.'

Barry Kilby also expamded on his working relationship with Flood

'I've known him for a little while and I think he will bring a lot to the party,'

'He's nearly 20 years younger than me so it gives you a new outlook.

'Burnley are really lucky in having directors who are fans that have put considerable chunks of their wealth in this club.'

More excitingly for Clarets fans, Barry Kilby also revealed he would be meeting with manager Steve Cotterill soon to discuss the player's budget available for next season. The positive noises continued backing up the 'High Five' announcement made previously by the gaffer.

'We've got a meeting before the England B game and we've got a budget for him,'

'At the moment we've got 16 players under contract. That needs to be beefed up.'

Kilby continued 'It's a coincidence that the reshuffle happened around the anniversary, but hopefully there'll be 125 more years.'

This all sounds very encouraging from the fan's perspective and it looks like the ambitious noises made by the Board in 2006/7 backed up by walking the talk in January 2007 will continue into 2007/8.

It's time to support the club like we have never done before and hope this time we can escape the outcome of midtable mediocrity experienced in all the previous post-Digital fiasco seasons.

It still looks a tall order mind you when you look at the comparative financial figures mentioned by Kilby above and one thing we dont have is a 'bottomless pit' of financial funding. Let's hope somehow we can find success in a league that is becoming increasingly more difficult to compete in with a 'great divide' between the wealthier clubs and clubs like Burnley FC becoming more evident with every new season. One does wonder whether the likes of Steve Bruce would do any better than Steve Cotterill on the pitch when faced with the financial situation and budget available to the Clarets. It needs I feel a unique type of manager to bring success to a club like ours and the achievements that Steve Cotterill has brought to the club should not be underestimated and it probably explains why in our latest poll there are now only 29% calling for his head. The message I think is slowly getting through from the pro-Cotterill lobby after the low spot of that winless streak in 19 matches.

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