KOMPANY “HARD WORK IS IN OUR DNA”

Manager talks belief and the Clarets culture

Clarets manager Vincent Kompany believes that his team’s DNA of hard work and belief will stand them in good stead ahead of the final four games of the campaign.

With Manchester United, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest still to face, how does the boss keep belief high within the squad?

“I use a saying to my players always, there are 250 million players that play football in the world recorded by FIFA. For each player to achieve to become a Premier League player, there’s maybe 500 players in the Premier League. So, you are one of those 500 that play football amongst those 250 million people right. So, the odds of you being a football player in the Premier League is much smaller than the odds of you staying in the Premier League with Burnley this year. So, you have to believe anyway, always, because you are already part of the people who have made something special happen by being a Premier League player and that’s it.”

The Clarets have just one defeat in the last seven games and Kompany says he knew progress would be made as the team’s DNA matches the town, with hard work being at the forefront.

“For us where we are, we’re in the north of England. Burnley’s the type of place where number one in the DNA is just hard work. Number one in the DNA is to know that you always have to believe in something better because this football club never had access to easy success. Therefore, this kind of situation we’re in now is something the club is very used to. That’s why this place is a very good place to work in, even in tough times. The belief is always there, it’s part of the culture.”

Kompany arrived as Burnley boss in June 2022. When asked about the style of play and culture he’s brought to the club, he said: “There’s a big difference between style and culture. Style is style, it’s how you dress, what you wear, it means nothing. Culture is who you are as a person, it’s your DNA. Hard work was always there, it’s still there, it fits with my DNA. Toughness and a little bit of being aggressive as a team, as a place, it’s still there. It fits my personality perfectly, but it fits the players, they understand it.

“Style is something…it’s a way to achieve a result, it’s a way that you understand the game so obviously I’m going to coach my team the way I understand the game. That’s nothing more than that.

“But if you look at the fundamentals of what this place has always been and you look at me who I was as a person and as a player, it fits much more than you can think.

“The style aspect, yes I have a way of understanding the game and the players, that is how I believe I can achieve results.”

Talking of style, it was in style that the Clarets earned promotion to the Premier League last season, accruing 101 points. If he were to go back to July 2023 as he prepared for the top-flight, would he do anything different?

“It’s a difficult question because we have limitations. I think we had a lot of decisions to make. So, when you have a lot of decisions to make you always look at did you make more right decisions than wrong decisions. I think on balance we made a few wrong but we made also a lot of right decisions. Then you have your financial reality, it’s as simple as that and you have to compete against teams who are more powerful than you. Maybe the biggest thing we learnt this season is we expected our team to be better across the season because we have the youngest team in the league, and we knew they were going to improve. We have a team that improves.

“But probably we thought that maybe a little bit earlier we would have had that moment you know, so now it’s taken us maybe a little bit longer than we thought. Therefore, maybe on reflection we could look at how we can actually get there a little bit quicker in the season.

“We’re really grateful that we have four games, and we still have every chance, but it would have been ideal if maybe a little bit earlier we would have been able to show the same quality as we have in recent weeks. We’ve played really well but we’ve had the results now, that’s the difference.”

If his side were to retain their Premier League status, Kompany believes the squad would continue to improve and he describes be ‘even more exciting’.

“Honestly, if we stay in the Premier League, I think next year we’ll be showing again so much improvement. I think what we’ve shown in the last seven games and recently, if you take that across a season. We’re always an exciting team but we’ll be even more exciting.”