Twelve months ago, Burnley were celebrating a 95th-minute winner at Wolves and dreaming of Premier League survival. Today, the Clarets are relegated, sitting in the Championship’s bottom three, winless at home in a full year, and facing down a furious fanbase over owners Alan Pace and ALK Capital. Few collapses in recent English football memory have been this complete, this fast.
Loum Tchaouna, now of Coventry, scored Burnley’s second in their last home league win in October 2025 (Credits: BBC Sport)
Rewind to October 26, 2025: Lyle Foster’s stoppage-time strike sealed a 3-2 win at Wolves that moved Burnley five points clear of the relegation zone and gave them back-to-back top-flight wins for the first time in over three years. There seemed plenty of reasons for optimism. Fast-forward 12 months and positivity has all but vanished — a failure to beat Portsmouth at Turf Moor would seal an unwanted home record, with the last home league win dating back to October 18, 2025.
Burnley’s Horror 12 Months: From 100-Point Champions to Relegation
The fall is stunning given the starting point. Burnley were promoted to the Premier League with 100 points in 2025, and since 2010 they have won promotion five times, bouncing straight back up on three of five relegations. For so long, Turf Moor was the fortress behind it: before this season, Burnley had lost just one of their previous 46 Championship home games, winning 30 of them.
That foundation has crumbled. After Scott Parker’s departure toward the end of last season, a move for Wales boss Craig Bellamy fell through, and Belgian Nicky Hayen was finally appointed less than a month before the new Championship campaign — with pre-season already started, some of Parker’s coaches still in place, and his main striker sold from under him.
Nicky Hayen Under Pressure as Burnley Fans Turn on Owners
The summer overhaul was brutal: 11 new players in, 10 out, including the deadline-day sale of main striker Zian Flemming. “You leave it right until the end of the window and you’re killing the manager,” former Watford midfielder and EFL pundit Jobi McAnuff told the BBC’s 72+ podcast, calling the squad-building “scattergun.” The signing of Jamie Vardy at 39 drew the same critique: “I love him but he’s 39 and you cannot expect him to be your main man all season.”
Fan voices are split on Hayen himself. “There is an element of sympathy among the fans for Hayen but two things can be true at the same time — you can sympathise and also think he’s out of his depth,” said Joe Redmond, creator of the Turfcast podcast. “At the very minimum we should be battling it out at the top end of the table… if it can’t then something has gone seriously wrong.” With the hierarchy taking the blame from all sides, the question now is whether Burnley can stop the freefall before the season is gone entirely.
Also Read: Vitor Matos: From Klopp’s Right Hand to Taking Swansea Top of the Championship
Source: BBC Sport — read the full story there.
