Football League World
·16 November 2022
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·16 November 2022
Burnley boss Vincent Kompany believes none of their summer transfer deals will put the Clarets in any form of financial danger, making this claim to Lancs Live.
The Lancashire outfit endured an extremely busy summer, with the club offloading the likes of Phil Bardsley, Dales Stephens, Aaron Lennon and Erik Pieters on the expiration of their contracts to lower their wage bill.
Others joined them in leaving the club when their deals expired, with James Tarkowski making the move to Everton and Ben Mee sealing a switch to the Premier League as well as he linked up with Brentford.
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DW Stadium Turf Moor Ewood Park Old Trafford
Departures didn’t end there though, as the Clarets were open to selling some of their key assets as Nick Pope, Nathan Collins, Dwight McNeil and Maxwel Cornet all left for sizeable fees, giving Kompany an opportunity to rebuild his squad with a decent amount of funds at his disposal.
And this is a chance the former Manchester City captain took with both hands, recruiting Scott Twine, Luke McNally, CJ Egan-Riley, Samuel Bastien, Josh Cullen, Arijanet Muric, Vitinho, Manuel Benson, Darko Churlinov, Denis Franchi and Anass Zaroury on permanent deals.
Five loanees also arrived and that has only increased the Lancashire side’s wage bill further – but Kompany is confident that the deals won’t sink them or make them uncompetitive.
He said: “The transfers we have done, none of them will sink us. All of them are making us fairly confident that we can survive in the Championship but also push if we go up. That is a good balance to find and we had no expectations.”
The Verdict:
Considering some of their recruits are reasonably young like Benson and Zaroury, you would think they wouldn’t be earning too much, with the club unlikely to be paying 100% of all of their loanees’ wages.
That will only help to reduce their wage bill – and a lot of their former key players also moved on in the summer with Pope and Cornet likely to have been earning a decent amount of money at Turf Moor.
It’s not as if they spent eight-figure fees on players either but they certainly generated a lot of money from sales, so the Clarets had the power to splash the cash a bit and probably could have spent more if they wanted to.
However, they will want funds available in January in case Kompany wants to move for a few targets and the Belgian may be keen to do so to give his side the best chance of securing their return to the Premier League at the first time of asking.
But his current set of players have done extremely well to guide the club to their current position, so major surgery won’t be needed when 2023 comes along.