Burnley won England's league title with a squad that cost just £13,000
When Burnley became champions of England in 1959–60, they had spent only £13,000 on transfers: £8,000 for playmaker Jimmy McIlroy and £5,000 for defender Alex Elder. The rest of the team came from the club's own youth academy. With about 80,000 inhabitants, Burnley became one of the smallest towns ever to produce a top-flight champion.
Innovation ran through Burnley's history. Founded on 18 May 1882 by members of a rugby side who switched codes, the club turned professional within a year and recruited Scottish players, then regarded as the best around. Because the Football Association banned professionals, Burnley refused to join, and in 1884 led 35 other clubs in a breakaway association. The FA relented in 1885. When the Football League, the first league competition anywhere, kicked off in 1888–89, Burnley was one of its 12 original members, and in only the second match William Tait scored the first league hat-trick in history.
Their first great era came around the First World War. They beat Liverpool in the 1914 FA Cup final, with captain Tommy Boyle the first to receive the trophy from a reigning monarch, George V. In 1920–21 they lost their first three games, then went unbeaten for 30 league matches, an English record, on the way to the title. There were darker moments too: in 1900 goalkeeper Jack Hillman tried to bribe Nottingham Forest, possibly the earliest recorded match-fixing case, and was banned for a season.
The golden age of the 1950s rested on chairman Bob Lord and a progressive setup that included one of the first purpose-built training grounds, at Gawthorpe. Manager Harry Potts used a then-unfashionable 4–4–2 built around McIlroy and captain Jimmy Adamson. But the abolition of the maximum wage in 1961 let big-city clubs outspend small towns, and decline followed.
Burnley sank to the fourth tier and in 1987 escaped dropping out of the Football League only on the final day. Winning the Fourth Division in 1991–92 meant Burnley had now topped every one of the four professional tiers, a feat only Wolves had managed before, and in 2009 they returned to the top flight after 33 years.
Source: Burnley F.C.
