Chapter 1: The End and the Beginning
**No one likes us**
**No one likes us**
**No one likes us**
**We don't care**
**We are Burnley**
**Super Burnley**
**We are Burnley**
**From the Moor**
– Burnley Football Club chant
(*A play on words: "Turf Moor," Burnley's home stadium, and "Moor" meaning swamp or bog.*)
[Goal! Another goal!]
The excited voice of the commentator echoed from the TV.
[In the 79th minute of the second half, Burnley's left winger Dwight McNeil completes his hat-trick, scoring Burnley's third goal! Burnley has scored three goals in just ten minutes, staging a dramatic comeback against Manchester City!]
[Look at Pep Guardiola's expression, the Manchester City manager. He's beyond anger now—just a look of utter disbelief. Let's take a look at the replay.]
The caster handed off to the commentator, who broke down the goal.
[Burnley's defensive midfielder Nicholas Seiwald lofted the ball forward from the center of the halfway line. Central striker Wout Weghorst won a header against Manchester City's defender John Stones and flicked it to McNeil, who was cutting in from the left. McNeil took the bouncing ball and smashed a half-volley into the bottom left corner of the net!]
[Manchester City's goalkeeper Ederson was caught off-guard and couldn't move a muscle.]
The caster chimed in, and the commentator elaborated.
[It didn't help that Manchester City's right-back Kyle Walker lost track of McNeil. But Burnley's right winger Karim Adeyemi also played a big role, constantly making runs down the right. That kept Manchester City's left-back João Cancelo and center-back Aymeric Laporte pinned back, unable to provide support.]
The energized caster and commentator quickly exchanged words, assessing the match's impact on the season.
[Oh, this game might not affect Burnley's position in the standings, but for Manchester City, who could've clinched the title with just a draw here, this is a real kick in the teeth.]
[The young Burnley manager, an openly admitted Liverpool fan, has just handed his childhood team a surprise gift in the final match of the 2021/22 Premier League season.]
[In a title race that's been a fierce three-way battle between Liverpool, Manchester City, and Arsenal, Manchester City was fighting tooth and nail until the end. But in the final game of the season, they've been tripped up by a rampant Burnley in this wild May showdown!]
The caster and commentator, thrilled by the upset on the last day of the Premier League season, kept their eyes on the increasingly frantic Manchester City bench.
[Oh, Guardiola is signaling for substitutions. But there's just not enough time left. To be fair, Guardiola might feel hard done by—right after conceding the equalizer, he started preparing substitutions, but while the players were warming up, they let in two more goals.]
[Burnley's bold substitutions landed a knockout blow. Oh, the fourth official is holding up the board. Defender Aymeric Laporte is coming off for forward Raheem Sterling, and central midfielder Ilkay Gündogan is being replaced by winger Riyad Mahrez.]
As kickoff approached, the caster and commentator analyzed Manchester City's frantic instructions and formation changes.
[They're leaving just John Stones at the back, with defensive midfielder Rodri stepping up alongside João Cancelo, who's moved from left-back. Kyle Walker, the right-back, is being waved forward to join the attack.]
[So now Manchester City has their existing forwards—Gabriel Jesus, Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, and Kevin De Bruyne—plus the newly substituted Sterling and Mahrez, and even Kyle Walker pushing up. That's seven players piling forward in an all-out assault in the remaining time. What do you call this—a 1-2-7 formation?]
[Guardiola, known for his beautiful football, is throwing everything on the line in this do-or-die moment of the season. But with just ten minutes left, can they really overturn a two-goal deficit?]
[If anything, Burnley's wingers McNeil or Adeyemi might exploit the space behind on a counterattack. Manchester City's Rodri, Stones, and Cancelo are essentially forming a back three to hold the fort defensively, but flipping this game looks like a tall order.]
[But here's the bigger picture: before this season started, Burnley was a sure bet for relegation. Who could've imagined a season that began with such grim prospects would end like this?!]
---
**Late at night.**
The view from the massive window on the 30th floor, overlooking all of Wall Street, was breathtaking no matter how many times she'd seen it.
But Helena Cartwright, gazing down at the nightscape she'd admired since childhood during visits to her father's office, felt a deep sense of doubt about the decision she'd made as a young girl—to join the family business that had spanned three generations: her grandfather, her father, and now her older brother.
"Dad, I don't even know anything about football!" (*Note: In the U.S., "football" refers to American football, while soccer is called "soccer."*)
Her voice rose a full octave in disbelief, but her father, seated at his desk with the giant window behind him, didn't flinch.
As always, he wore a custom-tailored, top-tier suit. The golden hair passed down through the Cartwright family was now noticeably streaked with gray.
Yet, with not a single strand out of place, Ian Cartwright II—known on Wall Street as the "Cold-Blooded Eye"—stared unflinchingly at his young daughter, a rising star at Cartwright Special Situations Fund and a darling of Wall Street and the private equity world.
"Helena, I'm not telling you to go play soccer. This is just a business. You're going to a struggling company to oversee and support a professional manager. If you can't handle that, you don't deserve a seat on our board."
"Even so, don't I need at least a basic understanding of the industry?"
"That's why I've prepared all this material for you, haven't I?"
Helena looked down at the books on her father's desk with an incredulous expression.
Even she, with zero interest in sports, had heard of Pelé—there was a biography about him.
Then there was a book by some journalist she'd never heard of about the Spanish national soccer team. (*Spain has a soccer team?*)
And finally, a book with a frowning, overweight old man in glasses glaring from the cover.
Marcelo… Bielsa? Who's that? Leeds United? What's so beautiful about it?
As Helena's confusion mounted, Ian Cartwright began wrapping up the conversation in his usual unilateral fashion.
"I've had Gina book your flight. You'll leave tomorrow morning from JFK. There's no direct flight to Burnley, so you'll land at Manchester Airport, and the club will send a car to pick you up."
Half-resigned, half-dumbfounded, Helena gave up on responding and started gathering the books. Ian added,
"Oh, and make sure to say goodbye to me before you leave."
"…Yes, Dad."
A few hours later, seated in first class on a flight from New York to London, Helena sighed and opened her laptop to review the materials.
Her mother, upon hearing about the sudden long-term assignment to England, had drawn on years of experience supporting her father-in-law, husband, and eldest son to pack for her daughter's indefinite trip in a matter of hours.
Of course, Helena had helped—or rather, spent most of the time paring down her mother's excessive packing—so she'd barely slept. But she knew the moment she landed in England, the grueling work would begin, so she needed to absorb as much as possible beforehand.
Having learned the hard way—whether managing a mine in Brazil or an auto parts company in Detroit—how critical the first week is in handling distressed assets, she was determined to cram as much information into her head as possible.
Opening the files, she began skimming through the acquisition background again.
Of course, as a director at Cartwright Fund, she was well aware of the broader context of the fund's involvement, but now that she was in charge, the details mattered.
Just two weeks ago, rumors had swirled on Wall Street that ALK Capital, which had issued £80 million in bonds to acquire an English professional soccer team, had failed to make an interest payment, rendering the bonds distressed.
Helena had been indifferent at first—she wasn't into sports like the rest of her family, and the total size of the distressed debt, a mere $80 million, was small potatoes compared to the hundreds of millions the Cartwright Fund typically handled.
That is, until Michael Dell—the owner of MSD Group, which had underwritten ALK Capital's bonds—reached out.
Until Michael Dell called his close friend Ian Cartwright III, the head of the Cartwright family and a legend in turning around distressed companies, with an offer to hand over a prime asset at a bargain price.
For reasons Helena couldn't fathom, her father had personally led the research team, pulling all-nighters for a week to evaluate the asset.
Then, last week, he'd closed a deal to acquire an English professional soccer team—sold just eight months prior for $260 million—for a measly $20 million.
The process involved buying the £80 million in defaulted bonds from MSD Group at a 75% discount for £20 million, seizing all the shares of the intermediate holding company pledged as collateral by ALK Capital, and converting the acquired bonds into equity to become the sole shareholder of that holding company.
It was a complex maneuver, leveraging the Cartwright Fund's three generations of expertise and legal tools in distressed asset recovery.
But however it was done, it was a stellar deal—on paper, a 1,300% return for the Cartwright Fund.
And with that, the Cartwright Fund became the sole owner of Burnley Football Club, located in a rural northwest English town called Burnley—a place Helena had to look up on Google Maps.
The catch was that to realize those massive paper profits, the fund needed to sell the distressed asset at a proper value. But the very reason they could buy it so cheaply was that no one else wanted it.
This was where the Cartwright Fund—Wall Street's undisputed leader in normalizing distressed assets—needed to prove its mettle.
For Helena, the frustration was that no professional manager had yet been appointed to oversee the asset's long-term recovery. And now she—a woman completely uninterested in soccer, or sports in general—had to throw herself into preventing the club from collapsing.
Sighing again, she tried to focus on the financials on her laptop screen when a familiar word caught her ear.
[…Club manager Sean Dyche has finally announced his resignation. He cited concerns over the club's financial situation, with two abrupt ownership changes in the past year and a rapidly growing debt burden. Most of Dyche's staff are expected to follow him…]
Helena turned her head to see a BCC News logo on the screen next to her, alongside the face of a bald man with a short red beard.
Misinterpreting the icy blue glare in her eyes, the passenger beside her gave an apologetic look and quickly put on headphones to muffle the sound.
But Helena was already swallowing a curse, her trembling hands rushing to open the folder on her laptop containing Burnley Football Club's files.
The club's financials over the past five years.
A three-year financial forecast mixed with guesses, expectations, and hopes.
Past and present player rosters.
Amid the meticulously titled files was a PowerPoint from the Cartwright Fund's crack research team, listing "Key Personnel" they absolutely couldn't afford to lose.
Her heart pounded so loudly it felt like her ears might burst, but she hurriedly opened the file.
On the very first page of the key personnel list was the face of the man she'd just seen on the news, staring back at her.
As a corner of her dazed mind registered that his green eyes were oddly pretty, the bolded, underlined red text beneath the photo seized her attention:
**"Sean Dyche. First Team Manager. Absolutely Cannot Lose!"**
"…Sh*t. We're screwed."
Unable to hold it in any longer, Helena let the curse slip out.