Up and Down: Will Burnley and Sheffield United Ever Shake Off Their Yo-Yo Club Tag?

A cursory glance at the Championship league table reveals that, barring a disaster, at least one of Sheffield United or Burnley will be promoted to the Premier League at the end of this 2024/25 campaign.

And in doing so, the Blades and/or the Clarets will continue a remarkable pattern of yo-yoing between the top-flight and the second tier.

Over the course of the last ten seasons, Sheffield United have been promoted three times and relegated twice, meaning that they have experienced absolute joy or abject misery in 50% of their completed campaigns over the past decade.

And Burnley can go one better: if they do get promoted to the Premier League this term, it will be the fifth season in a row in which they will have been promoted or relegated.

That up-and-down motion has given rise to the description of a ‘yo-yo club’; that is, a side that yo-yos between two particular leagues with remarkable regularity.

So what can Sheffield United and Burnley do to shake off their own yo-yo tag?

Blades Paying the Price  

What is the most important of the determining factors of success in modern football?

Quality players? A shrewd manager? A savvy army of data analysts and video scouts? All of those play a part, of course, but the truth is that cold, hard cash is the quickest route to glory in the beautiful game.

One of the challenges that many sides promoted to the Premier League face, and particularly Sheffield United in recent times, is whether to stick or twist financially: do you break the bank and risk breaching PSR rules in a bid to stay up? 

Or do you continue to operate on a Championship-level budget, picking up the odd player here or there in the transfer windows and, perhaps, planning for the worst but hoping for the best?

Sheffield United’s recent-most relegations from the Premier League have certainly followed this more conservative mindset. The Blades finished bottom of the table in both 2020/21 and 2023/24, losing 29 of their 38 games in the former and breaking all sorts of calamitous records for goals conceded in the latter.

During that 2020/21 campaign, Sheffield United paid out £52 million on permanent transfers for six players aged 23 or younger, tnone of whom were experienced in the top-flight. Leeds, who were promoted into the top flight for that same season, spent more than double that (£106 million)… they stayed up, whereas their fellow Yorkshiremen propped up the table.

In 2023/24, the Blades forked out £55 million on new players. But again, to a man, none of them had any real experience at Premier League level, Cameron Archer, Gustavo Harmer and Vini Souza making up the bulk of that spending. It was almost as if they were planning for life in the Championship the very next season… and that prophecy was self-fulfilling come the end of the term in what was nothing short of a disaster for the club.

Out of context, spending £55 million on new players in a single season sounds hefty. But when you consider the inflation of player values, and that any promoted Championship side really ought to be adding top-flight quality to their ranks, it isn’t really all that much.

One interesting development for the future of the club came back in December, when former owner Prince Abdullah Bin Mosaad Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud handed over the keys to the new American ownership consortium, COH Sports.

Apparently, the Prince has a net worth of £200 million. The new ownership group, which contains capital investor Steve Rosen and healthcare entrepreneur Helmy Eltoukhy, has combined riches in the region of £1 billion. 

That doesn’t guarantee that they will spend big on the club and its players, of course, and it’s worth remembering that a net worth of £1 billion is small fry amongst the global oligarchs of the Premier League.

But it does, perhaps, offer some hope to Sheffield United fans that they might be able to compete financially, somewhat, in the top tier… which gives them a much better chance of preserving their Premier League status if/when they regain it.

Red-Faced Clarets Hoping for New Era

When Burnley upset the odds for so long and not only survived but thrived in the Premier League, it was largely due to the managerial nous of Sean Dyche and his rag-tag band of hard-working and diligent professionals.

But much has changed since, with the Clarets now leaning on their own cash-rich stable of American owners.

Alan Pace (new worth: £190 million) has brought on board all manner of investors, including his own ALK Capital, entertainment group Dude Perfect and former NFL star J.J. Watt, who between them bring considerable financial heft to the party.

The last time that Burnley were in the Premier League, they flexed their collective muscle, spending £92 million on new recruits. But of the ten players that came in, only Sander Berge, at the princely age of 25, had any top flight experience. He was also the only signing made over the age of 24, as the club implemented a vision of building for the future under exciting head coach, Vincent Kompany.

However, they were relegated in their first season back, Kompany fled the nest for Bayern Munich and Pace and co were left to build from the bottom up once more.

They have entrusted their next generation to Scott Parker, who has overseen an extraordinary season of defensive football at Turf Moor. At one point, Burnley had gone more than 1,000 minutes without conceding a goal.

That said, their attacking play often lacks guile and originality, while Parker himself does not have a strong track record in managing at the top level. He took Fulham down in 2020/21, before being sacked before the end of August in his maiden Premier League season with Bournemouth. He was also relieved of his duties after less than three months in charge of Belgian outfit Club Brugge.

If Burnley are to end their yo-yo years, they will almost certainly need to spend big this summer… and they might also need to attract a head coach with proven experience of success at the elite level, too.

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