Sean Dyche recalls his Burnley days, style of play and Vincent Kompany's move to Bayern Munich

Kompany was Burnley’s permanent successor to Dyche, who left Turf Moor in 2022 after a memorable nine-and-a-half-year stint.

While Kompany’s reign got off to an incredible start, coasting to the Championship title with 101 points, the following season in the Premier League couldn’t have got much worse, with the Clarets being relegated back to the second tier at the first attempt.

While discussing his time with Burnley during his first appearance on his new talkSPORT show, Dyche made reference to Kompany’s surprise move to the German giants off the back of Premier League relegation.

“It was a great story for everyone involved,” Dyche said of his time at Turf Moor.

“I always tell this story because everyone thinks it was a glory story from the off, but for the first eight months, for four of those months I was booed off every week. I was getting battered.

“We got to seventh but then fell down the table due to a lot of in-house problems, contracts and all of that stuff, and we started falling down the table and were looking over our shoulder and could have got sucked into trouble. We won away at Wolves and then that changed it.

“In pre-season, we sold Charlie Austin two days before the first game of the season for about £4m, the club wanted the money in obviously. We spent nothing but brought in Tom Heaton, who was incredible, Scott Arfield, incredible, Dave Jones, incredible, all of them on frees and we got promoted.

“What the club were brilliant at, they dealt with that promotion in the right way. The reason for that was, and I was involved in this, when I got there they were still paying players off from two or three years ago when they got in the Premier League [in 2014]. I told them ‘you can’t go through that again, there’s got to be more to it and something that means something’.

“They agreed and built the training ground, we took a knock when we went down that first season after spending about £9m on the team, which is farcical really. But we put the money into the club and the future and they did stand by me.

“We went down that season on 33 points, which people forget, but we’ll go onto Vincent Kompany who got 24 points I think after spending £127m and ended up getting the Bayern job. I don’t know how that works, but I wish I was doing it!

“I wish I had left the club £127m in debt and got the Bayern job, but anyway that’s an interesting twist of life. But we kept building the club and the board stuck by us.”

Dyche also defended his style of play, which often brought criticism from observers outside of the club.

“Just to give the fans an interesting view, you’ve got to remember there’s an in-house story and an out-of-house story,” he added.

“The modern out-of-house story is that you’re not playing the right way. But do you think the chairman said that when we brought in a billion pounds over nine-and-a-half years?

“The expected turnover for us was about £130m but we brought in a billion, so he was quite happy I can assure you. The players were quite happy with their contracts and so was I, because mine was the biggest contract so I was like happy days! Win, win win.

“The fans were happy because we got into Europe, so there’s an inner story and people forget that sometimes.

“Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want the fans to know everything about the inside because they just want to enjoy the team, they want to cheer and shout and scream and all that sort of stuff.

“But sometimes you’ve got to know there’s a story inside the club. Everton was sort of similar but different. Not with the amounts of money, but we had to bring money in, not let it out. We had to lower the wage bill.

“People kept asking why we’re letting all of these players go in my first season. I was like: ‘are you not getting it? The club needs the money’. So it was constant talk, people saying ‘you’re not playing the right way, Dyche’, but I had the weight of the club on my shoulders. I went in 6ft 3ins and went out 5ft 1ins.”

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