MY FEAR OF GETTING INTO BAD COMPANY

Burnley boss was not prepared to gamble future on big-money buys

VINCENT KOMPANY says he was never tempted to “sign a pact with the Devil” to survive with Burnley.

The Clarets are staring down the barrel of relegation today and will go down after just one year in the Premier League if they fail to beat Tottenham away from home.

Kompany says he was not prepared to gamble the club’s future by signing expensive Premier League players on big contracts. He did spend more than £90million on overhauling his squad with younger players.

He feels they have added value to the team, saying: “It’s not like we didn’t know the options we had.

“You enter a restaurant, look at the menu and you know what you’re gonna get, so we knew what options we had.

“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, they want release clauses.

“All these kind of things where you sign a pact with the Devil almost just to get you through one season. That’s an option.

“Or the other option was to try and find the right mix, the right balance where you have some sort of experience in the squad that helps the young ones come through. These young players coming through (Wilson Odobert, circle, became Burnley’s youngest Premier League scorer at the age of 18) are the ones who hopefully in the future pay for the next crop coming through.

“That way you can gradually increase your spending, increase your budget.

“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, they’ve improved. 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.”

Kompany knows Burnley will have to sell to help them balance the books if they are relegated and he says the club should make a profit. “I’d like to think we’ll be able to benefit from the time we’ve invested in the players and if they go on and be successful, we’ll get a fair price for them,” he added.

“But when that happens... for me, the later the better.” Kompany, who is the Premier League’s youngest manager at 38, claims he still “loves” his job, despite their struggles.

“I didn’t sign up as a manager with it only in my head that if I don’t have success, then this job is rubbish,” he said.

“I signed up for the full package and I knew this was part of it.

“I’ve learned from this experience that even in the most difficult of times, I still love the job.”