Burnley are back in the Premier League, but not as we know them.
From playing style to personnel, manager Vincent Kompany has overseen a complete transformation of the club since his arrival in June 2022, following the relegation that saw the end of Sean Dyche’s 10-season reign, leading them to an immediate return to the top flight after a storming EFL title win.
Only five clubs in the history of the English second tier accumulated more than Burnley’s 101 points last season, while their average possession rate of 64.0 per cent is the highest ever across a Championship season since they started collecting that stat in 2016 — emphatic evidence of the slick-passing revolution that has happened at Turf Moor in the past year.
Ahead of what is sure to be a challenging return to the Premier League, optimism is high and confidence is coursing through the group. There’s also the fact that seven of the last 10 Championship winners have avoided relegation in their first season up among the elite.
Gone are the days of direct, physical football and aerial duels with Burnley. This lot will try to pass you off the park.
It’s been a whirlwind year for Kompany, who has worked tirelessly to implement an ultra-modern footballing vision at a club that had long been associated with some of the more, er, traditional elements of the English game.
Since their most recent Premier League game, a final-day defeat to Newcastle in the aftermath of Dyche’s seismic departure, Burnley have sold 17 players and brought in 18 on a permanent basis. Just seven first-team squad members, among them Josh Brownhill and Connor Roberts, remain from that relegation campaign.
The rebuild has largely been inspired by Kompany’s knowledge of the market in his Belgian homeland as they recruited eight players from seven different clubs there last season, from Charleroi to Westerlo to Sint-Truiden, at an average fee of £3.6million.
Lyle Foster was their big buy last January as they pushed on towards the title, but shrewd summer 2022 pickups in Josh Cullen, Anass Zaroury and Manuel Benson took the Championship by storm.
Promotion has led to more exciting moves, with striker Zeki Amdouni the most expensive acquisition so far. Centre-back Jordan Beyer has made last season’s successful loan permanent, while goalkeeper James Trafford, striker Michael Obafemi and centre-back Dara O’Shea are strong additions to a squad where the average age has been slashed from 27.3 years to 24.7 in the space of one season.
The only negatives for Burnley are the loan players who had key roles last season but are currently not back for a second year, with Nathan Tella and Ian Maatsen set to be retained by Southampton and Chelsea respectively.
Finding support and competition for Charlie Taylor as the only senior left-back in the squad will be high on the priority list for Kompany before the window closes on September 1.
Of course, while Burnley’s Championship form turned plenty of heads, the difficulty is going to lie in transferring their possessional dominance in that division to the Premier League.
Kompany’s new-look side did meet Manchester City in the FA Cup last season, offering a glimpse into their approach against the strongest teams. While an Erling Haaland hat-trick ultimately helped to sweep Burnley aside at the Etihad Stadium, the score finishing 6-0, they showed no signs of giving up on their brave, pass-heavy style. Only nine sides last season saw more of the ball away to City than they did.
Burnley also impressed as they beat Premier League side Bournemouth 4-2 away earlier in that FA Cup run, offering encouragement that their bold style will see them pick up points at bottom-half sides next season.
Pre-season has provided a fascinating insight into the way Burnley might look to build up when the results start to matter with their Turf Moor rematch with City on Friday night. Often looking to form a back three in the first phase, patient passing and circulation across the width of the pitch is crucial when it comes to them creating spaces to progress the ball forward.
Here against Portuguese champions Benfica, for example, goalkeeper Arijanet Muric has the ball at his feet, while three team-mates retreat to offer themselves for the pass.
Muric waits for the Benfica striker to draw closer before passing wide to Ameen Al-Dakhil, who ambles down the Burnley right a bit, before turning and playing the ball back to his ’keeper.
With an extra opposition player now committed to the press, Muric once again ventures far out of his penalty area to play a risky first-time pass across the face of the penalty area to Hjalmar Ekdal…
… who similarly dribbles out wide, before turning and giving possession back to his goalkeeper. This time, Muric places his studs on the ball to invite even more pressure.
By being so comfortable in tight spaces, Burnley’s defensive unit have now tempted six Benfica players forward to try to make a challenge. Intelligent movement from Scott Twine in midfield now opens up the pass…
… and Muric executes the defence-splitting ball to perfection, creating a five-vs-four situation.
Thirty seconds of play and five passes, switching the ball right, left and back again, has opened up central spaces for Burnley to attack.
A non-competitive fixture in July might not be the most conclusive of samples, but the patterns are clear to see.
Burnley are committed to their new way of playing and being up against higher-quality opposition will not force them to back down.
It’s not just at the back either. Kompany’s forward players are expected to be positionally fluid, able to drop into midfield to open up space for onrushing team-mates. Nineteen players scored league goals for Burnley last season and many of them did so by running into areas vacated by a flexible central striker.
Some movements were more subtle, such as this run towards the ball from Ashley Barnes at home to Huddersfield Town in February.
Dragging Huddersfield defender Tom Lees upfield with him, Barnes opens up space for full-back Roberts to run into the penalty area, receive the through ball from Jack Cork and finish.
Others were more intricate, including this piece of link-up play from Jay Rodriguez last October against Swansea.
Drifting out to the right channel, he combines with Roberts for a quick one-two, leaving acres of space in the middle of the pitch for his team-mates to attack.
Receiving the ball from Roberts once more, Rodriguez swivels and looks to find the marauding run of Cullen from deep.
Only two of the 15 outfield players with over 900 minutes played for Burnley last season took fewer than 10 shots on goal, underlining the variety in chance creation that came with a constantly rotating front line.
It’s a huge contrast to Dyche’s more direct style, with aerially dominant strikers no longer the principal methods of ball progression.
In 2020-21, for instance, Burnley’s Chris Wood contested the most aerial duels of any Premier League striker (355), while 21.3 per cent of the team’s passes were long balls. Kompany’s style of play has seen that latter figure slashed, going long with just 10.3 per cent of them last season.
What’s more, while Dyche’s final Burnley team completed an average of 4.2 sequences of nine or more passes per game, Kompany’s boys put together 20 of them a match. Patience is key for this new-look side.
The below pass network graphic, from the dominant display against Huddersfield mentioned above, shows how Burnley prefer to operate when they can impose themselves on a game.
Both centre-backs play important roles in distribution, while Cullen is the essential cog in the midfield — a secure passer of the ball who rarely concedes possession. The striker, in this case Barnes, plays deeper and links up with multiple players, while the adventurous Brownhill bounds forward where possible.
Last but not least, Burnley’s full-backs are incredibly adventurous. Both Maatsen and Roberts finished in the top five among 2022-23 Championship full-backs for touches in the attacking third, while contributing a combined 20 goals and assists.
Those triangles in wide areas also allowed wingers to combine with team-mates and find a way into the game, with Zaroury and Benson developing deadly reputations for cutting inside onto their stronger foot and whipping shots into the far corner.
The latter in particular was a consistent scorer of spectacular goals, ending the season as the player in the division who overperformed his expected goals (xG) number by the greatest amount — largely due to unstoppable curling efforts hit from the right half-space.
Having added FC Basel’s Amdouni to the mix — a prolific ball carrier who scored the joint-most goals (seven) in the Europa Conference League last season — Burnley have an abundance of talented, attacking players.
As a promoted team, they will not have it all their own way over the next nine months, but these high-quality recruits to a tactically cohesive squad leave them well-equipped to compete with the biggest domestic sides.
Irrespective of opponent and result, Burnley should be fantastic fun to watch.
(Top photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
