Flood: I felt Clarets were on a knife edge

The Clarets director is prepared to invest part of his self-made fortune on Burnley, with the hope of steering them back to English football's top-flight.

Flood admits it could take some time for Burnley to land their place in the Premiership promised land.

But with careful and prudent planning at Turf Moor, he insists the Clarets can join the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea.

It is unlikely that success will materialise overnight, as the 45-year-old outlines it is not his intention to instantly splash the cash on or off the pitch.

However, Burnley could soon look forward to Premiership football if the club follows the same path as Flood's outstanding business career.

After leaving St Theodore's RC High School in Burnley, Flood began his working life at Barclays Bank in Colne before launching his own company, Modus Properties, in 1991.

Manchester-based Modus has diversified over the last 15 years, with rapid expansion turning the company into a market leader in urban regeneration.

"I did not go to university," revealed Flood. "I went working for Barclays Bank in Colne when I was 18.

"I worked there for three years, then I went to London for a couple of years, and then back to Manchester. I've been around here since.

"I set up my own business Modus in 1991. I was a one-man band. I got myself an office and I was doing industrial units and out-of-town retail to customers like Matalan, Wickes and Carpet Right.

"I proved quite successful at that for about four or five years. I then started to buy shopping centres and bought about 14 of them between 1996 and 2002.

"I sold a lot of them from 2002 and 2004 and then Modus started to do what we do now - big dominant shopping centres in high-performing retail locations.

"We go into areas that are under-performing for their catchment but they've got occupier demand and operation demand for growth.

"In the 1990s, big regional shopping centres like the Trafford Centre, Merry Hill and the Metro Centre came along and provincial towns did not develop themselves.

"What's happening now, which is our market place, is that we are developing those provincial towns and making them stronger and pinching back some of the market."

In 2006, 15 years after Flood set up Modus Properties, additional offices in Birmingham, London and Lincolnshire had been established, as the company's development pipeline exceeded £1.2 billion.

Modus takes up the majority of Flood's time, so how does he intend to juggle it with the Clarets?

Flood revealed: "It is another challenge, but it's easier because I enjoy Burnley."

The father-of-three joined Burnley's board of directors last December, after a resolution at the club's AGM to remove the restriction on the number of directors.

Flood was urged by chairman Kilby and vice-chairman Ray Ingleby to join much sooner, but he felt the timing was right to step on board now.

He added: "I've been asked for a while to join the board because I know Barry and Ray.

"They've been to see me a few times over the last few years. They know I'm a keen fan and I always used to say it would be when I retire, when I've got loads of money and not enough on my plate, because I fill my day doing stuff.

"That would have been my ideal scenario. But I just thought, in this last year or so, that the club was really on a knife-edge.

"It could either go one way or another - bounce back down or bounce right up.

"It needed somebody like me to go in and sort of force some positivity into the club.

"The infrastructure is there and the people are there. On the pitch, we are 80 per cent a good team and it just needed somebody to prop up the ambition and hopes of the fans and the board.

"I won't be telling anybody anything too life-changing. I will try and keep it simple, but uncluttering a lot of messages that have gone around before.

"I'm very much a team-building person. That's been my strength in my businesses.

"I can work and consult with a lot of people and get them to work together successfully.

"That, in a way, ends up giving me the right result so I would say the benefit of having me around is that I will create a good team atmosphere, off the pitch especially.

"But I will try and engage it more with the on-the-pitch side as well."

It has been well documented over recent years that Burnley work to an operating loss of around £25,000 a week.

With his business acumen, Flood aims to change that, although he admits football clubs are different animals to the vast majority of businesses.

He explained: "It's one of those types of businesses where no matter how good you are - and you can include Bolton, Wigan, or anybody in the Premiership - they probably now make small profits, even though their revenues are hugely better than they were in the Championship.

"I think when you do become super successful in football, you end up giving away more than what you've got.

"But when you haven't got it to give away, you have got to sustain the club at a level you know will keep you competitive.

"Then you hope, one day, you get into the Premiership and then you can build the club on a slightly different foundation, where there are revenues which give more options.

"At the moment, with the losses at the club, they are what they are. From a business perspective, off the field, we can be better and a lot of staff are looking at ideas and bringing them together to reduce those losses."

He added: "The losses are not because of off-the-field activities. They are because of the on-the-field draw for investment that is required to be at this level of football.

"If you run the club strictly on a business footing, and strictly pay the wages that your income will allow, you will be relegated.

"You have to have some degree of benefactor/ ownership to keep you there.

"But I think we can create a bigger and better off-the-field business that will make that loss much, much lower within the next few years and sustain a good on the field team.

"If we do end up in the Premiership in the next five or 10 years, we will all be delighted because it will be a great team effort.

"That's possible with the right investment on a long-term basis, not just short-term."