Burnley: £500k tribunal fee proved too much after Man Utd snub: View | OneFootball

Richard Eckersley failed to make an impact at Burnley, after rejecting a new deal at Old Trafford

Burnley must have thought they had a bargain on their hands when they managed to snap up Richard Eckersley back in 2009, but it soon turned out to be a move to forget for both player and club.

The young defender had come up through the ranks at Old Trafford, and left the Red Devils in search of first-team football, with the Clarets paying £500,000 for his services after going to a tribunal.

Although it may have seemed a gamble worth taking at the time, the Turf Moor outfit couldn’t have imagined the situation would turn out just as bad as it did, with Eckersley making just four appearances for the Lancashire side over a two-and-a-half-year association with the club.

That period saw three loan spells away from the club, as the defender failed to establish himself with the Clarets after such high expectations when he made the move to the club.

Richard Eckersley turns down Manchester United for Burnley

It takes some guts to turn down an offer from Manchester United in the search of first-team football elsewhere, but that’s exactly what Eckersley did in the summer of 2009, as he left Old Trafford after featuring in just two Premier League games.

Having come up through the ranks with the perennial Premier League winner, the then-20-year-old would have had something of a reputation, as plenty of United academy graduates do, although to say that he failed to live up to that expectation is a little more than stating the obvious.

Burnley soon snapped him up, with a tribunal to figure out a fee for the young star to follow, which was eventually settled at the half a million pound mark, which pleased then-Burnley chief executive Paul Fletcher.

He said: "The outcome is satisfactory.

"When the smallest club in the league tries to take on the biggest club in the league you always wonder how it’s going to end up.

"But we thank the tribunal for taking a common sense approach to this.

"We have always valued the player around the £300,000 mark until he starts establishing himself in the first-team.

"When Manchester United were asking a million-plus, we thought we had to stand up and be counted and that’s what we did.

"The tribunal was represented by administrators of the Premier League who have hopefully seen the common sense of the way Burnley tries to run its business with sensible numbers, rather than allowing ourselves to get into financial difficulties further down the line."

Eckersley fails to live up to the hype after Burnley move

Eckersley’s first game in claret and blue summed up his time in Lancashire, having been given his marching orders for a second yellow card in a League Cup affair with Hartlepool United.

It didn’t get much better from there, with another appearances in defeat to Barnsley in a later round of the same competition, before featuring in the FA Cup in January, all without a single appearance in league competition.

After fighting so hard to agree a fee, Burnley were now happy to send the defender out on loan, with a stint at Plymouth Argyle in the Championship seeing him get some minutes under his belt, although the fact he never finished on the winning side for the Pilgrims speaks volumes in itself.

It was clear to see what Burnley thought of him in the next campaign, with another League Cup appearance followed by loans to League Two Bradford City and Bury, before a loan spell with Toronto FC, where he linked up with his former Plymouth boss Paul Mariner.

Toronto FC move helps Eckersley revive career before dramatic career change

With his stock in England as low as ever, Eckersley found some form across the Atlantic, as he helped his loan side win the Canadian Championship, before his contract with Burnley officially ended by mutual consent in January 2012.

A permanent move to the Canadian outfit soon followed, where he would play the next two seasons, before making the move to the Big Apple to join New York Red Bulls, although injury reduced his playing time while in the MLS.

UK’s first zero-waste shop in Totnes, Devon.