Burnley FC’s £1.5m Stoke City recruit flopped in spectacular fashion | OneFootball

Burnley's signing of Leon Cort will live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons

If Burnley fans were to make a list of all the positive things Brian Laws did for the football club, it certainly wouldn't be a long list and signing Leon Cort would be nowhere near the top of it.

His appointment after Owen Coyle left for Bolton midway through their maiden Premier League campaign in 2009/10 was nothing short of a catastrophe, and was ultimately a huge contributing factor in Burnley's instant return to the Championship, where they remained for four seasons.

While it would be unfair to pin relegation solely on Laws, things took a massive downward turn after his appointment and the Clarets never really looked likely to beat the drop.

His recruitment certainly played a part in their struggles, with Burnley missing a golden opportunity in January to strengthen their squad with quality, and it was quality they needed, not the quantity Laws added.

He may have added bodies to the squad in the form of six players coming in, but only Jack Cork and Danny Fox made any notable impact on the starting XI, with the signing of Leon Cort arguably among the worst in the club's history.

Leon Cort's signing made the Burnley back line weaker

January is a time for strengthening squads, and with the right recruits, Burnley had a great chance of staying up, but adding Cort to the squad somehow made the team weaker.

Cort swapped Stoke for the Clarets in a deal that was worth up to £2m, which at the time was a sizeable fee for the Lancashire club, who didn't even own their own ground at the time.

The former Potter made his debut against Chelsea at the end of January, and his dismal showing in that 2-1 defeat was a sign of what was to come, as a string of poor displays played their part in Burnley's end-of-season demise.

Cort made 15 appearances under Laws in the second half of the season and the fact Burnley lost 12 of those games was a damning indictment of how detrimental he was to their defensive unit.

That defence never kept a single clean sheet in those 15 games Cort played, which although can't solely be attributed to him, shows that he had a detrimental effect on a backline which had previously kept Manchester United and Everton at bay in the first half of the campaign.

Burnley couldn't get rid of Leon Cort quick enough after relegation

Cort was a key member of the Stoke City side who were promoted in 2007/08, and that was part of the attraction to Laws signing him, that if they went down in the worst-case scenario and they went down, he could help them get back.

But in fact, what happened couldn't have been further away from that, as relegation saw Cort drop out of favour, and he only made four more league appearances for the club.

He was shipped out on loan to Championship rivals Preston, and the fact he couldn't make the grade there was a damning indictment of how poor the signing was at Premier League level the season prior.

Cort eventually found a home at Charlton, where after a moderately successful loan spell, he joined on a free transfer after having his Burnley contract terminated two years after his disastrous move.

The deal was a crippling one financially for Burnley, as not only did they essentially lose up to £2m on the fee, but his introduction contributed to their relegation which crippled the club financially for years to come.