Barry Kilby has seen the beautiful game evolve since he became chairman of Burnley in 1998. After stepping down from the role on Friday, celebrating with some of the managers and footballers he has worked over the last 13-and-a-half years, he gave Clarets reporter SUZANNE GELDARD his take on the changing face of football and its impact on the Clarets, and how he handled being in charge of his team...

BEING CHAIRMAN

“YOU soon learn it’s not a normal business, everyone has an opinion, and whatever you do in running the business, it all depends on what those 11 players do on the pitch.

“If you lose three on the trot, the pies are rubbish and everything is rubbish, if you win three, it’s great and nothing else matters.

“What happens on the pitch affects everything, and it’s not within your control.

“To be a chairman, you’ve got to understand the club, know when to step back and when to go forward, sometimes you have to lead when there’s a crisis, and show the way to your employees.

“The other side is you get too sucked up into the media and are always trying to hear your voice every week – you have to know when to step back.

“As a fan it’s easy enough to gamble, but you have to face the bank manager.

“As a fan, your highs are super highs, and your lows are super lows, but all the time you have to be sensible and know what you’re capable of.

“I’m proud, the club is such a big thing in the town, something everyone looks up to, and there’s a responsibility there.

“You can’t always take popular decisions, but I think the fans have been very fair to me and it’s been a good relationship.

“Hopefully we’ve been open as well and have listened, gone to forums, answered letters, tried to do things correctly with them.”

TACKLING THE TRANSFER MARKET

“PEOPLE who want your players are generally after your best players.

“It’s quite difficult, and it’s not even your decision quite often.

“If a player wants to go, even if you’ve no economic necessity for him to go and you want to keep him, it’s not easy to do that.

“Agents say to me, ‘You’ve had an offer for so and so’, and we say, ‘We’re not selling him’. Then they come back and say, ‘So and so’s head’s not with it’, so you say, ‘What do you mean, he’s not going to try?’.

“There’s that hint. Then you start thinking, are we better getting the best price?

“If a player is tempted these days it’s extremely hard for you to just refuse and the player just to accept it – particularly if it’s for a bigger wage and a bigger club coming in.

“I think Burnley has a decent reputation about being smart kids on the block. We’ve had to be. I think in our dealings we’ve been right. We all make mistakes, there isn’t anybody that doesn’t, but generally speaking I think we’ve done well in our player trading.”

FAVOURITE PLAYERS

“I QUITE like the long-serving players like Brian Jensen, Michael Duff, obviously the glamour players, Gazza, Ian Wright, but my favourite players – Chris Eagles, Robbie Blake was always one of my favourites, I like those flair players.

“Ian Wright was very instru-mental, Robbie sticks in my mind though, scoring the winner against Manchester United, Glen Little – I didn’t sign him, but he’s one of my favourite players.

“We’ve had some very good players here.”

BALANCING THE BOOKS

“THE money we get now from the Premier League runs out in two seasons’ time, and it’s a lot less this season than last.

“Hopefully one thing I’ve done is to open up the share ownership of this club. We’ve now got over 2,000 shareholders. We’ve never been frightened of selling shares; selling capital in the company that diluted the directors down.

“That’s been a big thing that’s changed. I think it’s brought in not far off £6m into the club in fresh shares.

“Yes, it dilutes the shareholders down but it’s come in as capital rather than borrowing.

“I’m delighted we’ve got 2,000 shareholders. There are people with just one share who feel they have a bit of a stake in it. That was one thing we weren’t afraid of doing, and it had to be done.

“We could have had £6m worth of debt that I don’t know how we would have dealt with.”

THE TERNENT YEARS

“I THINK it was the right decision to keep Stan on, I always tried to let my managers manage, I always thought these guys have to stand by their decisions and one day you might have to sack them, so make sure it’s their decisions that are up for scrutiny. Changes have to be made, and we’ve had to make those decisions, but you don’t make them lightly.

“But they don’t make them like Stan any more, we had a good chat the other day. It was a good education as my first manager, he was a firebrand, short fuse, but also I’ve seen him be extremely sentimental and kind. A good man.

“They’ve all been tough decisions to let any of them go, you build up a relationship with them all.

“He shares your ambitions, so I’ve found it difficult changing managers, but you have to sometimes, managers do run their course.”

HIGHS

“WEMBLEY has to stand out, we got back into the top flight of English football after 33 years out, and some of us thought we’d never see that again.

“But I’m just as proud of becoming an established Championship club, our only relegation has been from the Premier League in my time here.

“We’ve had some tough times financially, just holding that together, trying to be the smartest kids on the block and not waste money is as big an achievement as getting into the Premier League.”

LOWS

“THINGS happen in football but ITV Digital was a massive thing.

“Those TV deals were a bigger percentage of our turnover than the bigger clubs that get 20-odd thousands gates and the commercial revenues that come with sitting in a catchment area of a million people.

“The football deal was bigger for us to lose than the others.

“That hit us particularly hard. We had to entrench and dig in and fill the void – and at the same time keep in the division, and we did.”

AGENTS

“WHEN I started the PFA were trying to become agents for players but that fell apart. I’ve seen them growing in power and it’s the way of the world now that you can’t deal with players directly, you go through agents who expect a sum of money from you, not their clients.

“They make more money moving players around than a player does staying where he is.”

CHAIRMAN’S PREMIER LEAGUE PLEDGE

“IT was a marketing strategy.

“Teams that had Premier League money were cheaper than us in the market place and that was being quoted to us; people were saying, ‘I can go and watch this Premier League club for cheaper than here’.

“That’s because that team was subsidised by massive TV revenues.

“We thought, if we get into the Premier League, for the number of people who will get their season ticket free it was 2.5 per cent, so we thought, ‘We will do that’.

“I must have thought we were on safe ground after not being in there for over 30 years!

“General hindsight’s never lost a battle, has he? But it was only a small thing, it didn’t cost us a lot of money.

“And what a reward for the people that were there!”