It’s a competition for opportunities

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We travel to Shrewsbury tonight for the League Cup and come face to face again with our former manager Steve Cotterill.

We came up against him in the pre-season friendly but the last time he had a side up against us in a competitive match was in 2012 when he was at Nottingham Forest. We won 2-0 that night under Eddie Howe with Jay Rodriguez scoring both goals and missing a penalty.

Embed from Getty ImagesCotterill was Burnley manager from June 2004 until November 2007 and certainly has happy memories of his time with us. “I’ve got lots of good memories,” he said. “I built a team from nothing really. I went in there, had eight players with an average age of 31 or 32. I ended up building a whole new team, ended up making them a few million in the transfer market.

“We had some great cup wins, knocking Villa out of the club, knocking Liverpool out of the cup. I had a great chairman; Barry Kilby, loved him to death and his wife Sonya. Fantastic people. It’s a great club. I had some great times there and I will be looking forward to seeing them.”

Looking forward to tonight, he said: “We’ll definitely have to change our team around. We understand what we are. They are an honest group the boys, and we want to win every game we play in. Tomorrow night gives me an opportunity to look at some of the younger players and some players in different positions because we are going to need that throughout the season.”

The cup competitions can be of huge benefit for clubs in the lower leagues. He said of that: “We all know about the financial gains. It’s not something I think about when kick off comes. I don’t look at how many are in the crowd and multiply it by how many. I don’t think about that, but all the money we get in helps without a shadow of a doubt.”

Embed from Getty ImagesVincent Kompany’s first public outing as Burnley manager was at Shrewsbury, and he said yesterday: “We played Shrewsbury a few weeks ago in pre-season, so there will be some elements we can take from that game into this one. I don’t think they have changed too much since then, they are now a few games in and we will be more competitive. It will be a good cup tie for us.”

With this his first cup tie in charge at Burnley, I think some thought he might play his strongest team, something rarely seen in the Sean Dyche era in this competition, while others believed Kompany would make changes. He answered that very quickly, saying: “It’s a cup for the squad. Teams who use their squad well do well in this cup. It’s one of the reasons why a lot of the big teams get there regularly, they have big squads. I think it’s crucial to use the squad in the right way, usually that’s what can give you that edge in this competition.”

Kompany himself played in four finals, all of them won. He said of his memories of this competition: “Every final, they stand out,” adding: “It’s a competition for opportunities to also see players that are important for the season or for the future of the club. It’s a good mix, personally I like it and look forward to it, you want to win and like I said, I have never seen a team win this competition without using the whole squad.

“For me, it’s not about rotation or granting game time to anyone. You saw in the last game, in the second half, we look like we had a tough week for the first time this season. So, wherever we can, we have to try and compound that for certain lads, but I do expect two or three teams within my squad to do exactly what we want to do. If some players don’t get a chance now, then they won’t be able to just come and perform later in the season. It’s an important competition for us.”

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