KOMPANY ‘FRUSTRATED’ WITH LATE DEFEAT AT VILLA

Clarets boss reviews late defeat at Villa Park

Manager Vincent Kompany was left disappointed but ‘extremely proud’ following the Clarets’ 3-2 defeat at Aston Villa on Saturday, as the visitors looked to be heading towards a deserved point at Villa Park.

Burnley came from behind twice to pull the scores level in the Midlands before an 89th minute penalty from Douglas Luiz sealed the victory for the home side who moved joint-top of the Premier League.

Following an end-to-end encounter against Unai Emery’s men which saw five goals, a red card, a disallowed goal and a VAR check on a potential Villa handball, Kompany was understandably ‘frustrated’ but had high praise for his team’s performance.

“Today’s probably the most frustrated I’ve felt you know, because I have to take a lot of pride in how the team play, but the team’s been doing that for a while now.

“I’m extremely proud of the team, I always am to be fair and they give me that and the frustration is just because you are doing exactly what you need to do in games like this to come away with something.

“But in terms of how we get results it’s frustrating to see how this game actually plays out. I can’t get away from the feeling that the game could be managed better.”

Kompany added: “The Burnley fans can be very proud of the players tonight and I said to the players, it won’t make sense from anyone on the outside, but I think I’m the proudest manager in the league because every single day they put the hard work in.

“No doubt about it, they will bounce back and they’ll brush it off and they keep going and that’s something special we have within the club, that we have to keep going.

“There’s things we did really well and things we can do better going forward but the team is exciting, it’s an exciting team to work with.”

The Burnley boss had questions around some of the decisions and added: “Maybe my frustration is that some of the things that are happening, I just don’t understand. Like I have phases of play in my head where against it is just a handball situation, where against Forest we get the goal disallowed for exactly the same phase, if not lighter than this.

“Then it could be a sending off, it takes the ball off our striker and it denies a goal scoring opportunity. I’m just trying to understand and get my head around how these things happen.

“I just really struggled to understand some of it today but I have to sleep past this and I’ll be able to recognise that we have to focus on ourselves.

“I know we have to look at ourselves. We made some mistakes as well but we also did some great things. So it’s all about us in the end. But the lesser things like these happen, the more we can talk about the game.”

Lyle Foster’s goal saw the strike take his tally to four for the Premier League campaign and Kompany was proud to see him get his first goal following his return to the side after a mental health break.

“I honestly don’t know how he does it. I really don’t. We saw him when he was at his lowest point and it even makes me emotional to think about it because it was a real tragedy.

“To see him enjoying playing now with the team, I’m happy for him rebuilding his happiness and for me as a human not just a coach, it’s beautiful for me to observe.”