MIKE Garlick is intent on being Clarets chairman for at least the next five years, despite talk of a takeover at Turf Moor.

Burnley have been linked with investors from America and the Middle East amid reports of a £180million takeover.

Interest is set to intensify given the healthy nature of the club’s finances, after they posted a pre-tax profit of £27.3million for the year ending June 30, 2017 – a financial position which Garlick has described as “the best we’ve ever been in, in the history of the club”.

But while he says he and Burnley’s board of directors are open to investment, there are no plans to hand over the reins.

“I’m planning to stay another five years. I can’t see any changes on the horizon – I don’t think any of the board members are going imminently challenge me,” said Garlick.

“I get calls quite regularly from people saying they’d be interested in investing. We have an attitude of ‘If you want to, who are you? What do you want to do?’ When I ask questions like that most people tend to go away.

“You’ve got to be careful what you wish for. These people are unknown quantities, you’d have to get to know them pretty well before you make a decision.

“If someone wanted to come in and invest money and they are the right calibre then we’d always seriously look at it, but there’s not a for sale sign up that’s for sure.

“If it did happen I’d want to stay and I think everyone else would want to stay in place. There’s nothing imminent, I can assure you.”

Burnley’s homegrown board is rare in modern day football, certainly in the Premier League.

But Garlick has no designs on wholesale changes.

“It would be a shame to pull that apart,” he said. “Tread with caution.”

Garlick has applied a similar approach to the club’s finances, as did Barry Kilby before him during his chairmanship.

And it is one that has paid dividends as the club look to another Premier League season with a healthy bank balance.

“Put quite simply it’s the best position we’ve ever been in, I think in the history of the club, not just recent times – financially speaking,” he said, noting the difference from 2015 accounts when they spent less, but returned to the Championship after one top flight season.

“It was a slightly different balancing act between the season’s figures and, say, two years before when we were last in the Premier League.

“We gave it a real go this time, we really did invest some money in making sure that we stayed up.

“We’d done all the development work at Barnfield (training ground), the monies had gone up in the Premier League so we had more cash at our disposal, so we had to give it a go to try and stay up, which we did of course.

“If we’d adopted more of a similar approach to last time around and maybe spent a bit less the profits would have been higher, but would we have still been in the division? Maybe not.”

Asked what he made of Burnley’s Premier League and financial status, lifelong Claret Garlick said: “It’s been unbelievable hasn’t it? If you were to look back 20 years, 10 years, five years at what’s gone on - I’d say it’s been more than evolution, it’s been revolution.

“But it’s keeping it at a level where it is evolution, even though to the outside world it appears like everything’s changed, internally we’ve just got to keep pushing forward slowly but surely.”