Coaching legend

In addition to leading the team in some warm-up matches, George spent all his remaining time on other things.

This year, Burnley sold seven people and received a total of 5.34 million pounds. With the club's investment of 500,000 pounds, George can control the amount of 5.84 million pounds.

George only spent 1.45 million pounds in the summer transfer, and there are still 4.39 million pounds left. George has not touched this money, and of course George has never thought of handing it over to the Burnley board of directors.

Those people on the Burnley board of directors are all people who are greedy for money. Moreover, none of them have the slightest sense of crisis and cannot see the rapid development of modern football at all.

George has a very important use for this money.

George and Carl Pat have discussed many times that even if Burnley is promoted to the Premier League in the future, Burnley's competitiveness is limited. Several major shareholders of Burnley have limited funds of their own, and they are not rich people like Abramovich.

And they are all stingy people, and it is impossible for them to come up with a lot of funds. Therefore, it is impossible for the Burnley board to come up with tens of millions of pounds of transfer funds a year, and it can even be said that it is very difficult to come up with 5 million pounds a year. 5 million pounds, in the English League A and League B, is a huge amount of money. But this amount of money is not enough in the Premier League.

If it was still possible in the past few years, then with the implementation of the Bosman Act, the Premier League will become the league with the most serious money burning. In the future, with the arrival of Abramovich, the investment of Premier League teams will be even more crazy, and it will be difficult for Burnley to stand firm.

Even if George came from the future, he had a clear understanding of the future development of football. But at most, he could only recruit some unknown players, which was okay in the 1990s when information was not very developed, and in the early 21st century. But once the 2006 World Cup, those young stars who came later would be targeted by major clubs as long as they had a little strength. Without financial resources, they could not be signed at all.

A club has many aspects of income, and the most important ones are three aspects. Ticket revenue, TV broadcast fees, and the last one is sponsorship fees.

First of all, Burnley cannot compare with big clubs in terms of ticket revenue. For a town with only 80,000 people, it is very good to have 20,000 people who can watch the game on site. More importantly, the townspeople in Burnley have very low incomes, so the ticket prices cannot be too high. For example, the people in Burnley cannot afford half the price of tickets to Highbury. Therefore, Burnley has a congenital defect in ticket revenue.

As for the TV broadcasting fee, the biggest head in the 21st century is the Champions League. But it is difficult to enter the Champions League without investment. There are many powerful clubs in the Premier League. Manchester United and Arsenal are not to mention, Chelsea is also rising, and Liverpool is a traditional giant. Moreover, at the turn of the century, there will be the glory of Leeds United, Newcastle United, and Tottenham Hotspur, all of which are strong teams. To break through, it is necessary to increase investment.

Sponsorship fees are closely related to the team's performance, and all of these require money. But what Burnley lacks most is money. Since it cannot invest more money in the transfer market, it can only find another way.

When George became a member of Burnley's coaching team six years ago, he had his own plans for Burnley's future. If Burnley wants to continue to develop, it cannot rely on the investment of the board of directors. It needs to take a healthy path. After discussing with Carl Pat, George felt that developing his own youth training path was the most important.

So George invested most of the remaining 4.39 million pounds in the improvement of Burnley's youth training facilities. Of course, it also includes improving the scout network and not limiting the selection of talents to Burnley. Burnley is too small and there is not much room for selection.

"Wilkinson, even the current first team I didn't spend more than 4 million pounds. You can't waste this money." George first discussed with Carl Pat, and then with the board of directors. Especially with Kilby.

Kilby didn't quite agree. Kilby thought that it would be better to use the money to buy more powerful players than to invest in youth training. In Kilby's mind, being able to stay in the A-League is the most important thing. As for youth training, the effect is too slow.

But under George's insistence, Kilby had no choice but to agree. After all, most of the money was the transfer income from George's sale of Bobowski and Darren Huckabee. Then George found Wilkinson, the youth training director of Burnley.

Wilkinson has never been a first-team coach since he came to Burnley. He has always served in the youth team and has worked with George Levy's father, Old Levy, for many years. He is more than 20 years older than George and has been in the club for nearly 30 years.

George has always been the youth team director and values ​​Carl Pat more. But he still respects Wilkinson very much.

"George, you have done what your father has always wanted to do." Wilkinson is only 51 years old, but his face is full of wrinkles, and he looks like he is in his 60s. He looked at George with a kind look. "We are a small club at Burnley and can only be self-sufficient. Developing the youth training camp is the right way."

"I know that my father's greatest wish before his death was that Burnley's youth training camp could train more players for the first team." Speaking of old Levy, George looked sad. When he came to this strange country, George was also very hesitant for a while.

But old Levy's constant care and support helped George get through the initial period. Old Levy's lifelong dream was to be in the Burnley club, hoping to see Burnley return to the top league.

"If you see your current results, your father will be proud of you."

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Soon Burnley invested four million pounds to improve the training base. Burnley's original training base was very simple, but four training grounds were added at one time, allowing Burnley to have its own training ground for all ages.

Then big trees were planted around the training ground, so that the training ground was surrounded by trees.

Burnley was originally a small town, and the environment was already very good. Especially compared to those large industrial cities, Burnley's environment is as good as it can be. This change made the entire Burnley club feel like being in an isolated garden.

Later, Burnley hired several scouts, including scouts from England and some scouts from the European continent. This is to increase the club's talent base in Europe.

Compared to the big moves in the transfer market, this matter of improving the club's training base did not attract much attention. Even Burnley's local fans did not pay attention to this.

"In the second year of becoming Burnley's head coach, George made an unexpected decision to use the transfer income from the sale of Bobowski to improve Burnley's training base and strengthen Burnley's youth training camp. This seemingly simple move was not taken seriously by anyone at the time, and even the reporters who followed the Burnley club did not think about it. But it was not until ten years later that people realized that George had laid the most solid foundation for Burnley's development." - Steven Yellen wrote in "Small Town Story".