Brian Laws is happy that Burnley FC are frugal

Ahead of tonight’s visit of Hull City, Laws mulled over the financial opposites of the two clubs that suffered the same fate after dropping from the top tier last season, claiming that he doesn’t envy the situation at the KC Stadium.

The Tigers threw money at an ambitious bid to become an established Premier League team, parting with £13.9m on transfer fees alone during their first season on players such as Jimmy Bullard (£5m), Kamil Zayatte (£2.5m), Anthony Gardner (£2.5m) and Peter Halmosi (£2m), while bumping up the wage bill on captures including Geovanni, Bernard Mendy and George Boateng.

Their second season saw the arrival of £3m Seyi Olofinjana, £2m Kamil Gilas plus Amr Zaki, Ibrahima Sonko, Jozy Altidore, Steven Mouyokolo, Stephen Hunt and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.

That reportedly prompted a block on player transfers into the club, set in place by the Hull City board in July, until transfers out substantially reduced the £39m per-year wage bill, posing new boss Nigel Pearson with the unenviable task of rebuilding.

Laws said: “I think Hull did very well the first year that they stayed in the Premier League.

“But the second-year syndrome was the killer because they really went all out to believe that they’d be a stable side in the Premier League and they threw a lot of money at it as everybody has seen.

“They have had a really tough period and they’ve just over-excelled themselves so they’re finding it hard now to cope with it.

“That’s the fine line of how far you go when you just get into the Premier League.

“I think our chairman and the board have done the right things by playing it steady.

“For all the money you can get for the game in the Premier League, you soon lose it and you can put yourself in such a difficult situation that you can’t get out.

“Hull are finding the fact that they are still in the rut and they’re still having to make a lot of changes.

“However, they are working through it and we’ll have to wait and see how it effects them this year.”

The Clarets’ only seasonal double in the Premier League came against tonight’s opponents, with a 2-0 victory at Turf Moor at the end of October and a comprehensive 4-1 victory away in April.

However, Laws insists history counts for nothing and with a new regime in place under Pearson he is fully expecting a tough test.

“We’d like to keep that going but it counts for nothing as unfortunately you can’t rely on history,” Laws added. “sspecially when they’ve made so many changes with a new manager in and new ideas.

“They’ll be looking to bounce back into the Premier League last year.

“We all know their finances have been very uneven there and they’ve found it very difficult over the last 18 months, so much so they’ve had a lot of turmoil and maybe that’s why they’ve had a mixed bag of results at the start of the season.

“But if you give them the run of things you can see that they’ve still got quality in there and it’ll be a stern test for us.

“There’s a lot of belief in our camp and a lot of belief in the dressing room that we can go into any game knowing and feeling that we can win it. One of the things you’ve got to admire is that Nigel Pearson left a team at Leicester City, where he’s had a phenomenal 18 months with promotion from League One and then getting into the play offs and being very unlucky not to get to the final.

“Yet’s he’s left Leicester City to go to Hull, so he’s obviously seen a bigger picture and he may think that it was an opportunity for him to do well.

“I’ve always had some good games against him and I think this one will be exactly the same.

“He’s very astute and he certainly knows the game so I expect Hull City will be a very tough nut to crack.”

And after clocking up 28 attempts at goal against Bristol City at the weekend, Laws hopes they haven’t used up all their fire power in their search for a fourth home win of the season.

But the Burnley boss remains wary after Hull recorded their first away win in 24 attempts against Norwich City.

He added: “I hope we haven’t used up our attempts at goal.

“It was an incredible stat after the game to see that we’d had so many chances against Bristol City, and on a normal day that would be enough for three games.

“Hopefully there’ll be more from us to come but obviously you’re a bit concerned that we haven’t used too many up. It’s a tough game for us.

“We’re looking to take three points off every team that comes here.

“But not many teams will go to Norwich and take all three points.

“We are very mindful that they hadn’t won away for a very long time, so it’s only a matter of time that they’ll start doing it and go on a run of games.

“We’ve got to make sure that they don’t start at Turf Moor, but if we keep playing the way we are we can go into these games knowing that we have got goals in us and we’ve got the ability to shut them out if necessary.

“We’ve said that the home form is going to be key and you want to sign off on a high.

“We want to chunk these periods between the international breaks.

“We had a satisfactory one before so if we win tonight and take it into Saturday’s game then you know you’re in a good strong position as well.

“We know we are being very creative and if we continue that we know that the time will come where we’re hitting the back of the net on a frequent basis.”