'Thoughtful': Burnley chairman Alan Pace discusses finer details of new partnership with Dundee

ALK Capital recently announced a “strategic alliance” with Football Partners Scotland, Dundee’s majority owners, that will promote player development between the two clubs.

Both clubs have also pledged to work together on shared initiatives to support local communities.

When asked if there’s a timescale on the link-up or if it depends on what division Dundee are in, Pace told BBC Radio Lancashire: “It doesn’t. It might matter for how many players we can send or what level we can send them, but we don’t really have a timescale, a sell-by date or an end date, we tend to be more thoughtful than that.

“Let’s see how it goes, let’s see how it runs, let’s see how we can work together without any artificial boundaries.

“We’re just hopeful it will continue to provide opportunities like we’ve seen for the players that have gone up there so far and hopefully there will be other things coming the other way.”

Having previously been linked with a potential takeover of Belgian side K.V. Kortrijk, Pace has also admitted the Clarets could now look to forge partnerships further afield.

Burnley’s chairman says any partnership, regardless of location, must be “genuine” and done for the right reasons.

“It comes back to how authentic those partnerships really are,” he added.

“A lot of the time you will see things announced as commercialisation versus something actually to do with one another.

“For us there are definitely places to go and people to do it with, but it has to be helpful to both parties in a really genuine way.”

Opening up on the Dundee partnership, Pace continued: “We’ve been looking at opportunities as a club to expand our network of relationships with other clubs, where we can share some of our knowledge and experience but also develop players more robustly than we have just within our academy and within our system.

“We’ve been speaking to other clubs, some of it has been fairly well broadcast and published in Europe and elsewhere, and we’ve been now talking for several months with our friends in Dundee and we came to the conclusion that this would be a really great opportunity to move forward.”