Sources: Burnley lead Bournemouth in £20m race to sign Toure
Burnley lead the race to sign Almeria striker El Bilal Toure this summer, sources have told Football Insider.
The 21-year-old has emerged as a top target for the Clarets after impressing in Spain and France over the past two seasons.
It is understood that Bournemouth share a strong interest in Toure and a number of other Premier League clubs are keeping tabs on the forward, but Burnley currently lead the race.
Toure scored seven goals in 21 La Liga appearances last season, including a winning goal for Almeria against league champions Barcelona.
Vincent Kompany is eager to add more firepower to his squad and sign a player capable of leading the line at Turf Moor, and Toure has risen to the top of Burnley’s shopping list.
Football Insider understands that Almeria are demanding around £20million for Toure to be sold this summer, which would represent a significant profit for the Spanish side after signing him from Reims last summer for £8.6million.
The Mali international started his career with Reims’ second team but was quickly promoted to the senior squad in 2020 after scoring twice in two appearances.
Toure spent two years with the French side, making 68 appearances, scoring nine goals and providing five assists.
He has also scored four times in his first 13 caps for Mali after being called up to the national side in 2020.
Almeria tied down Toure to a six-year contract when signing him from Reims last summer, meaning the Spanish outfit are under no pressure to sell him below their asking price.
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He scored our most important goal
Which was the most important goal ever scored by Burnley and who scored it? It’s a question oft asked and one I would always answer with a selection of four goals.
There was Bert Freeman’s FA Cup winning goal in 1914, Trevor Meredith’s title clincher against Manchester City in 1960 and Wade Elliott’s Wembley stunner in the 2009 play-off win against Sheffield United.
Had Freeman not scored, we wouldn’t have won the FA Cup. We wouldn’t have been champions without Meredith’s goal and there would have been no Premier League place without Elliott scoring at Wembley. They are all key goals in our history. Had they not been scored, we’d have missed out on a couple of honours and we’d have had longer to wait before playing in the Premier League.
I did say four goals and that accounts for three of them. I would offer consideration that the fourth was the most important of the lot given the consequences had it not been scored.
That takes us back to the 9th day of May in 1987. We kicked off the final game of the season against Orient in bottom place in the Fourth Division. We had to win and then hope. Neil Grewcock scored right on half time and three minutes into the second half we doubled our advantage with an Ian Britton headed goal. Orient quickly pulled one back but we hung on and with other results going our way we climbed up two places.
We will never know what would have happened had we not won. Would there have been a Burnley Football Club in the 1987/88 season? Would there have been a new club set up similar to those we’ve now seen elsewhere?
Grewcock’s goal was every bit as important, just as Brian Pilkington’s goal had been at Maine Road back in 1960, but, ultimately, the match winning goal, the club saving goal, was scored by Britton who I’m sure didn’t score too many goals with his head.
He’d just ended the first of three seasons he spent as a Burnley player, his final three seasons in league football. He was 32 by the time he signed for us, initially on loan, but he’d already had a successful career with Chelsea and Blackpool.
We have to go to Chelsea for the start of the Ian Britton story. He joined them as an apprentice as a 17-year-old and was given his first team debut in the final game of 1972 against Derby when aged just 18. He came on as a substitute for Ian Hutchinson in a 1-1 draw, playing alongside such as John Hollins, who sadly passed away today, Alan Hudson and Peter Osgood, the scorer of the Chelsea goal. Derby, for whom John O’Hare scored, fielded England internationals Roy McFarland and Colin Todd in their team.
He was with Chelsea for almost another ten years during which time he played over 260 league games for them, scoring 33 goals. It was an up and down time for the club. They were relegated from the First Division in 1975 but it was then he became a regular in the team. Two years later, with players like Ray Wilkins in the team, they were promoted but went down again in 1979.
Three years later, he left Chelsea and returned to his home town of Dundee where he played for United. He had just a year there but it was a year that they became Scottish champions for the only time in their history.
He kicked off the next season at Arbroath, for whom he played just twice, and in November he moved on loan to Blackpool. When his month’s loan ended, Blackpool boss Sam Ellis signed him permanently and in that first season only Paul Stewart scored more goals.
His second season there saw them promoted and I doubt there was any thought from him that one of the teams going down, one of the teams they were replacing in the higher division was Burnley. One season on and Britton was heading back down to the bottom division when Ellis allowed Burnley manager Brian Miller to sign him on loan. It was a loan deal initially because, quite simply, we couldn’t afford to buy him.
It was early in that season that I first met him. At work that day, a colleague with no interest in football asked me if we’d signed Ian Britton. Bemused that he’d possibly know that, he told me that he’d been in the same class as Britton at school in Dundee and asked that I remember him to Britton. I asked Britton that night if he remembered this colleague who was called Pete Bracegirdle, Britton’s answer was: “How the **** can you forget someone with a name like that.”
This story ends sadly, as we all know, but Pete passed away at a far too early age too in similar circumstances.
Britton played in most of the games that season having made his debut at Torquay on the opening night. He scored three times too. His first came in a defeat at Tranmere but the other two were of huge importance. He scored the first as we came from 2-0 down to draw against Torquay and then that goal in the Orient game.
Never really a goalscorer for us, his next season was his best in front of goal at Burnley with four and it was a season that ended for him at Wembley in the Sherpa Van Trophy against Wolves. It was a much different team in this season and Britton was the only player who had started the Orient game who kicked off for us at Wembley although Leighton James was introduced as a substitute in the Wolves game.
Ten days after the Orient game, he’d celebrated his 33rd birthday, he was now set to play his final season in league football. He continued as a mainstay of the team and scored another three goals, the last of which was at Tranmere where he’d scored his first Burnley goal. Things were about to change at Burnley after that game with Brian Miller standing down and Frank Casper returning as the new manager.
Although still a regular in the side, he was almost 35 at the season’s end and was released by Casper. A league career that had begun over sixteen years earlier was at an end. He’d played 130 games for Burnley with 108 of those in the Fourth Division.
He continued to live locally and was involved in local non-league football for some years. He managed Nelson and in July 1992 he played against Burnley in a pre-season game for Burnley Bank Hall in a team that included other former Clarets Derek Scott, Phil Malley, Grewcock, Ashley Hoskin, Jason Harris and Mick Wardrobe alongside Kiko Rodriguez and Gary Norwood whose sons were Championship rivals in the 2022/23 season.
Britt remained hugely popular with the Burnley fans and always joked, having scored the goal against Orient, that he never had to pay for another pint in Burnley. He was recognised by Burnley FC Supporters’ Groups who awarded him their special achievement award in 2014. He was given the honour that night of making the presentation to the current team on winning promotion back to the Premier League.
By then, we had learned that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was a battle that he sadly couldn’t win and on 31st March 2016 he sadly passed away after a brave battle with the disease. He was just 61.
The record books will tell you that he played considerably more times for Chelsea than any other club, over half of his appearances were for the London club. He’ll be remembered there undoubtedly, but nowhere will he be remembered more than at Burnley.
A really nice bloke too, his name is now etched in Burnley Football Club history. Rightly, he’ll never be forgotten and we will all continue to thank him for that goal he scored back in 1987.
