Kompany glad he didn’t sign pact with Devil
‘NO SPLASHING CASH HERE’
VINCENT KOMPANY says he was never tempted to “sign a pact with the Devil” to help Burnley survive.
The Clarets will go down after just one year in the Premier League if they fail to beat Tottenham today.
But manager Kompany says he was not prepared to gamble the club’s future by signing expensive stars on big contracts.
He spent more than £90million to overhaul his squad with younger players and feels they have added value to the team.
“It’s not like we didn’t know the options we had,” said Kompany.
“You enter a restaurant, look at the menu and you know what you’re going to get.
“You get more experience, pay more money, they’re higher risk in case we get relegated, higher risk in case they get injured, higher risk in terms of contracts where players don’t want to lower their wages if we go into the Championship.
“All these kind of things where you sign a pact with the Devil almost just to get you through one season.
“The other option was to try and find the right balance where you have some sort of experience in the squad that helps the young ones come through.
“These young players are the ones who hopefully in the future pay for the next crop coming through.
“That way you can gradually increase your spending. The cost of that is at times we’ve not been as competitive as we’d like. But the benefit is they’ve made a lot of strides forward. “The fact they’ve played in the Premier League makes them so much more valuable, but not just valuable financially, I’m talking valuable in terms of the output they will have for us very soon.”
Meanwhile, Ange Postecoglou has vowed to ruin King Charles’ weekend, just days after he was invited to Buckingham Palace.
The Tottenham manager was a guest of the monarch and Queen Camilla at a sun-soaked summer garden party on Wednesday.
But relegation-threatened Burnley are the club closest to the King’s heart. Postecoglou said: “I would be happy to disappoint him on that front.” The Australian said his invitation came from his own government. Big Ange posed for pictures with fellow attendees but admitted he didn’t get to within “10 feet” of the king.
Which is just as well because the Greece-born Postecoglou might have said too much about ancient artefacts in the British Museum. The Spurs supremo said: “If I had got closer I probably would have asked him about the Parthenon marbles. “And probably I would then have got thrown out!”