Good environment. The term crops up regularly in Vincent Kompany’s description of Burnley. His portrait is revealing, getting to the heart of why the coveted manager has signed a new five-year contract and will not place a ceiling on how far his Championship winners can develop in the Premier League next season.
Kompany and his players savoured the good environment of Burnley on Wednesday when thousands of fans packed the town centre to witness the title winners’ open-top bus parade to Turf Moor. The 37-year-old admits he had a plan to reclaim the club’s Premier League status within three years when accepting his first management job in English football last June. It made sense to be prudent at the time. Burnley lost 16 players after relegation – only four brought in a transfer fee – and the first parachute payment from the Premier League repaid debt incurred as part of ALK Capital’s takeover. Ten months and 21 signings later, Burnley were back, Kompany having transformed the squad, playing style and mood way ahead of schedule.
Now he wants to transform how the club is viewed. His new contract, announced at the height of speculation linking the Manchester City legend to the vacancies at Chelsea and Tottenham, forms part of that strategy.
“I am probably going to be the most informed about the decisions I need to make for my career,” he says. “I try not to place too much importance on what other people think. I have also been in top-level football for 20 years now so I know it is really difficult to find a good environment and really difficult to be in a place where you have achieved something. Because we have achieved something this season I think it is only logical that you are surrounded by people who will believe in you and will do something extra to get over the line together. That environment, trust me, it is extremely difficult to find it in football.
“The reason why I also signed the new deal was because people believe what you write, so when I try and convince a player to sign for the club they say: ‘Yeah, but surely you are going to go so why would I sign for Burnley?’ We need to turn this around and this helps me. We can continue to progress and grow confidence in the club and then over a period of time when you show that you are a good club people will come for the club and not necessarily for the manager. It is just getting those steps, first grow that confidence, and signing a new deal shows things are settled and things are calm here.”
Burnley’s chairman, Alan Pace, has likened having Kompany as manager to “dating the most beautiful girl in town and knowing there’s probably no chance she’ll ever marry you. But everybody else wants to marry her.” He hopes Burnley and Kompany “stay a couple … for a very, very, very long time”, and it is clear why.
Burnley won promotion with 101 points, and the highest-scoring team in the Championship also had its meanest defence. The title was clinched with the sweetest of victories away at their fierce Lancashire rivals Blackburn. Kompany attributes his immediate impact to the right blend of experience – Josh Brownhill, Ashley Barnes, Jack Cork and Jay Rodriguez among those steeped in claret and blue – and astute, young signings not burdened by the previous season’s relegation. “The official data is that usually 40% of transfers end up being successful in the first year,” Kompany says. “So when you do 16 or 17 the risk of it going wrong is really big, even if you get players you believe in. We were lucky that in year one we made very few mistakes.”
The former Belgium captain turned his thoughts towards next season even before the Championship trophy parade. The ambition and competitiveness that characterised Kompany’s playing career were evident as he contemplated Burnley’s return to the Premier League.
“The historical data would say there is always a big chance of relegation for any team who has been promoted, [but] there are those few clubs who kick on and that’s who we need to want to be,” he says. “I cannot make a statement of where we will end up. Let’s not put a ceiling on it, let’s not put a ceiling on how high we can get. Success will be defined differently than in the Championship, I think that is fair to say. As you can tell, I struggle to pronounce the words of what success will be like. I cannot say that success will be not being relegated. It is not in my nature. I will physically struggle to answer that question for the next few months. I just want to go and compete. Don’t put a ceiling on it.
“My key thing is there is a big side of me that knows all of these players who are at the top, top level now – Jack Grealish was in the Championship not so long ago, Kyle Walker went from Sheffield United – we have a few players who are on that pathway. Guys like Anass Zaroury. I am not saying they are going to reach the same level but where they are right now for their age, I don’t think anyone can predict what they are going to be. Next year we will get that out of them, so I am excited for that. Ameen al-Dakhil and hopefully some of the other players we will announce soon. There are players who might not be 100% Premier League players yet but they can shoot through that league if they keep the same attitude.”
There will be changes. Barnes is leaving as a free agent after almost a decade of stellar service after Burnley opted not to extend his contract. “I don’t like the word ruthless because it has negative connotations sometimes,” Kompany says of this summer’s potential turnover. “It is my job to improve the team, so whether that’s developing players or bringing new players in, it’s my job to develop the team. It’s something that I consider as my duty. If we can bring in players that make the team better … the team knows. They never compete just with their own teammate, they always compete with everyone in the world who is available to Burnley Football Club. In your position, you have to be better than every player we can afford.”
Kompany adds: “There are 400 million people who play football in the world. There is talent on every corner of every street of any major city in the world. You go from Colombia to any city in Africa to anywhere in England, there is talent everywhere. The hard part is to have the combination of talent, work rate, consistency and mentality. But you find them. I don’t think we compete in the same way as other clubs either. We have a clear profile of player we want and that might not be the profile that other clubs want, so we always have a pool of players we can choose from.”
