Burnley boss Vincent Kompany responds to FA charge and addresses standard of refereeing

The Burnley boss has been critical of referees in recent days following Lorenz Assignon’s controversial red card against Chelsea last week – one of several high-profile incidents that have gone against the Clarets this season.

Kompany was sent off for his reaction in the dugout and has since been slapped with an FA charge for misconduct.

He has no qualms with the charge, but looking at the bigger picture he admits he will continue to share his feelings with the footballing authorities for the good of the game.

“Not necessarily right now, but I have shared and I will share in the future, definitely, because it’s to the benefit of the game,” he said.

“It’s of course much bigger than my personal situation or the situation of the club, because I don’t want it to come across as it just being unfair to Burnley.

“I said it, it’s not good enough. There’s nothing wrong with it, it happens in life. The main thing is: are we taking steps to get to where it needs to be?

“I have known the level of refereeing in this country to be the best in the world and of course a new element has been introduced with VAR and new rules, so it’s not easy. But in a constructive way I definitely think there’s a lot to learn out of this season.

“You can see I’m not saying this with any other intention, let’s just get it right.”

Kompany added: “My comments on the standard of refereeing was just an objective and fair assessment. Just like there’s a lot of things we should have done better as well. But it’s life.

“There are ways to make it constructive, which is definitely not the way I did it on Saturday. But it’s the way I’m trying to do it now.

“But I have to move on and the main thing now is the [Everton] game.”

Kompany has until 6pm today to respond to the FA charge, which alleges: “the manager’s language and/or behaviour around the 40th minute was improper and/or abusive and/or insulting towards a match official and/or questioned their integrity”.

With such an important game against Everton coming up this weekend, Kompany admits he’s not paying too much attention to his FA charge.

“It’s really far from my mind at the moment,” he said.

“I’ll dive into it once I finish preparing for this game and then probably have a few chats internally with the club.

“But other than that, what’s done is done and it’s all about the next game now.”