"If you don't learn from the past, you're going to keep making the same mistakes." That's JJ Watt on Burnley's two failed Premier League campaigns — and it might be the most honest thing any co-owner in English football has said about their own club's shortcomings in years.
The former NFL defensive end, who bought a minority stake in Burnley in 2023 alongside his wife Kealia — a former US international — has just released the club's 2026-27 away kit. He designed it himself. It took nearly two years. It features the old crest, a pattern referencing Gawthorpe Hall, and lettering lifted from vintage Burnley programmes. The whole thing is a deliberate rejection of the minimalist trend swallowing modern football kits.
"Everyone is trying to go modern and minimalist," Watt said. "I wanted to go back and do some detail."
This isn't a vanity project — he's writing cheques
The celebrity co-owner model gets a lot of cynicism, and fairly so. Most of it is brand partnerships dressed up as football investment. Watt is clearly aware of that perception and addressed it directly: "Yes, I've absolutely put money in. I've put a significant amount of money in. Trust me, this is both a passion project and a business endeavour."
He also draws a distinction between two types of investor — the kind who wire money and post match highlights, and the kind who actually show up. Watt has served as strength and conditioning coach, club ambassador, charity fundraiser, and now kit designer. Say what you want about the results on the pitch, but passive he is not.
His explanation for ending up at Burnley specifically is straightforward: he visited, saw a small Lancashire town that reminded him of Wisconsin, and felt something click. "I kinda fell in love with it," he said. There are worse reasons to buy into a football club.
The yo-yo problem — and whether Nicky Hayen changes anything
Burnley have won the Championship with 100 points. Twice. And been relegated from the Premier League. Twice. It's a cycle that's starting to define the club more than any single achievement, and Watt doesn't pretend otherwise.
The diagnosis he offers is sharp. The first Premier League attempt under Vincent Kompany was built around developing young talent with a long-term horizon — an approach that didn't survive Kompany's departure to Bayern Munich in summer 2024. The second attempt went the opposite way: older players, more experience, a defensive setup. That didn't work either.
"You're making a cake, and you have to find the right ingredients. Sometimes you have too much sugar, sometimes too much salt."
Getting that balance right now falls to Nicky Hayen, who arrived from Belgian side Genk having previously built something real at Club Brugge. Watt's first impression: "He's very aggressive in what he wants his teams to do. He wants them to press, be up on the front foot, counter-attacks." The new coach's opening question to Watt was whether he'd be comfortable with twice-daily training. Watt's answer was essentially: finally.
That pressing, high-energy identity is a significant shift from last season's defensive pragmatism. Whether Hayen can implement it fast enough to matter in what promises to be a brutally competitive Championship — Leeds, Sheffield United, and Sunderland are all targeting the same two automatic spots — is the question Burnley's promotion odds hinge on. Hayen brings genuine pedigree, but the Championship doesn't care about your CV from Belgium.
"We cannot act like it is a foregone conclusion," Watt said of promotion. "Even though we've done it with 100 points, twice. The second you feel comfortable in that is when someone snakebites you and you're done."
- Burnley have been relegated from the Premier League in each of their last two top-flight seasons
- Both previous Championship title wins came with 100-point hauls under Scott Parker and Vincent Kompany respectively
- Nicky Hayen led Club Brugge to title success before his spell at Genk
- JJ Watt spent 12 seasons in the NFL with the Houston Texans and Arizona Cardinals before retiring in 2022
The fans, Watt acknowledges, are running low on patience. Two relegations changes the emotional arithmetic — promotion, if it comes, won't feel like a celebration so much as an obligation met. The club needs to stop arriving in the Premier League and immediately looking like a team that doesn't belong there. Hayen's job is to make sure that, if Burnley go up, they go up knowing exactly who they are.
