Vincent Kompany outlines Burnley’s plan for free weekend following Luton Town postponement

The Clarets were initially set to make the trip to Kenilworth Road in their opening away game of the season to face fellow newly-promoted side Luton Town.

But owing to the £13m worth of ground improvements, the Hatters had to postpone the game as they couldn’t guarantee the works would be completed in time.

It means that, following on from Friday’s opener against Manchester City, Burnley don’t have another game for 16 days – with their next fixture coming against Aston Villa on Sunday, August 27.

While such a gap between games is far from ideal, Kompany actually welcomed the time off to work with his players – especially the new summer signings – on the training ground.

“For us it was brilliant,” he said. “Two more friendly games and we’ll get some more minutes into the legs of the new players that have arrived.

“At some point it will cause an unnecessary strain on the calendar in terms of having to play midweek, but if I look back at last year I think we played 16 or 17 times in midweek, so I think we’ll be missing it by then anyway.”

It’s been reported elsewhere that Burnley were due to face Scottish sides Dundee United and St Johnstone in behind-closed-doors friendlies at Gawthorpe this coming Friday.

However, St Johnstone manager Steven MacLean has since revealed they’ve cancelled their game owing to injuries.

“I was going to take a game against Burnley but we’re not going anymore because of the injury list. We have too many players out to risk it,” he said.

“It made sense a couple of weeks ago when it was first arranged but given what’s happened since, we’ve decided we just can’t do it.

“It’s unfortunate because we wanted to get a game and a few weeks ago it looked like it would have been a good one for us.

“We’re just going to work everyone hard here instead.”

Both St Johnstone and Dundee United aren’t in competitive action this weekend having been knocked out of the Viaplay Cup.