Vincent Kompany accepts he has taken charge at Burnley at a “delicate and dangerous” time but is determined to turn the relegated Lancashire club around.
The new Clarets manager has also confirmed he hopes to add Craig Bellamy, his former Manchester City team-mate who had a spell with rivals Blackburn, to his backroom staff at Turf Moor.
Kompany was named as Sean Dyche’s permanent successor last week.
The task ahead is daunting one with Burnley facing financial difficulties and having lost some key players since dropping out of the Premier League at the end of last season.
Yet after guiding Anderlecht to successive third-placed finishes in what he feels were difficult circumstances, the 36-year-old is not fazed.
“It’s really a very delicate and dangerous period of time when you’ve got these transitions,” said Kompany. “You can fall very far down or go very quickly back up.
“The difference between (going) left and right is massive, (but it’s) just small details.
“Obviously in my previous job I ended up the wrong side of it, we’d already gone too far down the wrong path and I can see it cripples the club.
“There’s nothing you can do, you want to get players but you can’t and you have to sell players. That’s why I rated the job I did at Anderlecht as a fantastic job.
“The advantage we have right now is we are on the brink. That’s why I came here – to turn a corner.”
Kompany is keen to have former Liverpool, Newcastle and Wales striker Bellamy alongside him in the dugout.
Bellamy played alongside Kompany at the Etihad Stadium from 2009-11 and also had a spell working alongside him in Belgium.
“He’s one of the rumours that were actually correct, after the pics got out,” said Kompany at his first Burnley press conference on Friday.
“He’s someone I have huge respect for. He’s incredibly gifted and he’s a typical misunderstood guy who gives so much. If I can have him with me, I will.”
As a player Kompany won four Premier League titles with City, two of them coming under the guidance of the inspirational Pep Guardiola.
Asked what he had learned from the Spaniard, Kompany said: “I met this fantastic coach, the best in the world and the simple thing I took from him was, not a style of football, but that he was the very best at telling his players why they were doing things on the pitch.”
Kompany feels Burnley at least have better facilities than City had when he signed there prior to their takeover by Sheikh Mansour in 2008.
He said: “This club is 10 times better. That’s a state-of-the-art facility (with) fantastic pitches, everything we need to be extremely demanding with the players.
“It’s an incredible work environment but it’s a different era. Every club has invested since.”
Kompany spent well over an hour speaking to media and did not shy away from one difficult subject.
In 2020 a fan controversially organised a plane to fly over the pitch during a Clarets match towing a banner which read ‘white lives matter Burnley’.
Kompany said: “If you start judging an entire organisation and the people and players because a couple of idiots are flying a banner…
“You come in and you work hard together and build something. Sometimes you change mentalities in that way.
“I’ve come in to coach a football club, to write a story. I always stay by my principles no matter what. There’s no way I would associate the football club with this.”
