{"id":8737,"date":"2023-11-10T16:42:55","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T16:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8737"},"modified":"2023-11-12T01:38:14","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T01:38:14","slug":"kompanys-clarets-come-calling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8737","title":{"rendered":"Kompany’s Clarets Come Calling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I will hold my hand up and say that I had expected Burnley to be higher up the table this season after romping away with the Championship last term. Only goal difference keeps them off the bottom of the table. With four points from their first 11 league games this season, it will take a minor miracle for them to come anywhere near my \u2014 or several other ‘holics’ \u2014 Predictathon placings. However, I want no thaumaturgy worked until after they have visited the Emirates on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, the Clarets may see a glimmer of divine intervention in that we have stuttered in our home performances against them of late. They secured a draw on their previous visit in January 2022 and beat us the time before that, keeping clean sheets in both games. Our last home win was a 2-1 in August 2019. Lacazette and Aubameyang scored to extend a run of unbeaten league games against them that stretched back to 1974.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, we have won 49% of 113 games against them in all competitions to their 30%. Their wins include the first game between the two clubs; we were thrashed 6-1 at Turf Moor in an FA Cup tie in 1896. It was the only competitive game our keeper that day, Bert Russell, played for the club. Burnley would be beaten 7-1 by Stoke in the next round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following season saw the first league game between the two sides, which we lost 5-0, and another FA Cup tie, lost 3-1. A draw in the home league game at the Manor Ground, Plumstead followed. At least the results were moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would not suffer another sustained run of defeats until the end of the 1950s turned into the 1960s. Harry Potts’s team, in which Jimmy Adamson and Jimmy McElroy were far from the only stars, beat us in seven of nine league games between September 1958 and May 1963. During that time, they won the league in 1959-60, were runners-up in 1961-62 to Alf Ramsey’s Ipswich and got to an FA Cup final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It subsequently all went pear-shaped. By the mid-1980s, Burnley had sunk to the old Fourth Division. They avoided relegation to the Football Conference in 1986-87 by the skin of their teeth, an unlikely win against promotion-chasing Leyton Orient on the last day of the season lifting them off bottom place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The uneven and, at times, uneasy climb back to the Premiership was completed by 2009-10, but they went straight back down to the Championship. Then came the Dyche years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vincent Kompany took over after Burnley’s still newish US owners, ALK Capital, gave Dyche the tin tak in April 2022. The Belgian inherited a team newly relegated to the Championship and brought them straight back up, securing promotion with a Championship record seven games to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had replaced many of Dyche’s squad of battle-hardened heavies with 16 mostly young, foreign, and cheap players capable of attacking possession football. You can take the man out of Pep’s Man City and all that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preparing for the team’s return to the Premiership, he did even more of the same, shedding 11 more players but spending a further 111 million euros on acquiring 20 new ones \u2014 almost half of them under 23. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet he did not spend extravagantly; Zeki Amdouni, the 22-year-old Swiss international striker, was his most expensive buy at 18.6 million euros. Other acquisitions included England U21 goalkeeper James Trafford (17.3 million euros), the promising young midfielder from Villa, Aaron Ramsey (16.5 million euros), a young centre-back from Bayern Munich, Jordan Beyer (15 million euros), and Sander Berge (13.9 million euros), a DM once talked about as a possible Arteta acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kompany’s company has yet to jell. One of the Belgian’s difficulties is that bringing in young players and getting them up to Premiership standards is challenging, doubly so on the scale he is attempting. The process takes time, always in short supply in the Premiership. Kompany has a long-term contract, and the owners have bought into ‘the project’, whose goal this season is Premiership survival. Nonetheless, he is the first Premiership manager to lose the opening six home games of a season. The threat of relegation always puts the best-laid plans in jeopardy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kompany’s on-field problems are at both ends of the pitch \u2014 and in the bit in between. Injuries and inconsistent selections have impeded playing a settled defence. Compounded by mistakes of inexperience, ruthlessly punished, the defence is the second leakiest in the league. The midfield, crucial to the possession football Kompany wants to play, has not proved able to control games \u2014 and may not have the quality to do so in the top flight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up front, his tyros are creating chances but not scoring. Top summer buy Amdouni has just one goal but is still joint second-highest goal scorer, behind Lyle Foster, who hit three in seven starts but is now out dealing with mental illness. Foster’s cover, the veteran Burnley-born and raised Jay Rodr\u00edguez, who has scored 45 Premier League goals and around 150 senior goals in his career, has not gotten off the mark this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when Kompany’s team put together spells of good play, which they do, they cannot maintain them for 90 minutes or avoid making mistakes. There is a reason that Arteta hammers on about the need for individual and team consistency of excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A word of warning: Burnley’s form is better away from Turf Moor. All four of its points have come on the road, as have half their goals; they concede only one away for every two they let in at home. Last season, they started slowly, too, winning only five of their first 13 games before roaring off to take the title. They only lost one of those, but it is a sign that, at some point, Kompany will get his new arrivals up to speed. Just not yet, please.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With another damn interlull to follow the Burnley game and only one win in the past three league games \u2014 no wins, no points, no goals, November, to paraphrase Robert Hood \u2014 Arteta will likely field his strongest available team, with the emphasis on available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that Partey, Jesus, ESR and Timber are long-term absentees. Reading between the lines, Tomiyasu will also be out. \u00d8degaard and Saka are rated 50\/50 to be fit. So is Nketiah, although his injury was the excuse for leaving him out of the England squad. If they fail late fitness tests, Jorginho and two out of Trossard, Vieira and Nelson will replace them. I’d sit Saka out regardless. There is no need to risk him for this game, but Arteta will likely disagree. If \u00d8degaard can play, it may well be off the bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, I will hazard a starting line-up similar to the one that smothered Sevilla midweek:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jorginho, Rice, Havertz<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka, Trossard, Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the outburst at the officiating at SJP a week ago and the subsequent pronouncement of the Key Incompetents Panel, I will be mildly surprised if we are still playing with 11 at the end of the game and Arteta has not been spirited off to that gulag where prisoners are tortured by being forced to listen to an endless tape loop of Gary Neville and other northern ex-pro pundits. Michael Oliver, the ref who booked Martinelli twice in one passage of play against Wolves, will have the whistle. Craig Pawson will be the fourth official. Michael Salisbury will be the VAR, assisted by Ian Hussin. No pressure, lads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘holics pound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I continue to eschew a survey of the bookmakers’ odds given the players’ betting scandals (other moral objections are available; see Bath previously). Yet, it is a game in which at least a 3-0 home win seems a reasonable aspiration. Burnley has not kept a clean sheet in its last 16 Premier League games, and Vincent Company said this week that he is committed to sticking with the way he wants his team to play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some goals are due in this fixture; the last five games between the two clubs have offered up just four. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game, ‘holics, near and far, and as the match is not being televised in the UK, for those there, may your streams never freeze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will hold my hand up and say that I had expected Burnley to be higher up the table this season after romping away with the Championship last term. Only goal difference keeps them off the bottom of the table. With four points from their first 11 league games this season, it will take a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8737"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8771,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8737\/revisions\/8771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}