Vincent Kompany has praised Jay Rodriguez after the ‘bleeding for the club’ striker propelled Burnley to fourth place in the Sky Bet Championship with the winner against Bristol City at Turf Moor.
Local boy Rodriguez’s fifth goal of the season extended the Clarets’ unbeaten streak in all competitions to eight games and came against the club where he made his debut for Burnley 15 years ago.
Manuel Benson’s fourth-minute goal – his first for the club after his summer move from Royal Antwerp – gave the home side a strong start.
But it was nullified by Nahki Wells’ close-range equalizer after 27 minutes and for a moment it looked like Burnley would be held to their sixth draw of the season by the visitors who defended resolutely and threatened at the break .
But Rodriguez secured the three points – the Clarets’ fourth league win of the season – when he headed home after a cross from substitute Joey Gudmundsson in the 67th minute.
Kompany said: “I’m happy. It was a good performance and a great victory. I’ve seen a lot of Bristol City games this season and I knew it would be a tough game. But we are entering the international break with exactly what we wanted.
“We are extremely lucky to have Jay Rod in this team – for many reasons. One is the obvious quality he shows, but he’s a local guy – he bleeds for this club. We knew if we could keep him fit and happy, he would be a great player for us and he showed that today.
For the second game in a row, Burnley conceded a corner, but Kompany claimed there should have been an offside decision before the corner was awarded.
He added: “We think it was an offside. The league is a league of set pieces – 50% of goals scored come from set pieces.
“Any time the ball goes out for a corner or a free kick wide, you know it’s something you have to deal with. We’ve dealt with most of them, but we’ll have to come back to this one. We’ve played 10 games and we did as well as anyone in dealing with set pieces.
“We are happy after 10 games because when you look at the situation of the team at the start of the season there was a lot of uncertainty and today there is music in this team and that is what it is. must be maintained.
“There is still a lot of progress that can still be made.”
City manager Nigel Pearson was heartened by the way his side achieved back-to-back defeats against two clubs relegated from the Premier League last season – that narrow loss followed a 3-2 reverse at Norwich in midterm. week.
He said: “We had our chances, but they’re a decent team. They had a lot of possession. The goals we conceded, we could have done better with both.
“But we have been playing this week against two teams who have recently been in the Premier League and we have been competitive. The players have shown themselves well this week. Their application has been very good so I have no complaints.
“I have to be realistic about where we are. It illustrates the difficulties that teams can have to be regularly good in the Championship. It’s a tough league. But I know we are in a decent position and creating chances.
“We’re averaging 1.4 points per game, which I guess is a big improvement from where we were, but we’re probably a little disappointed.
“All the games we have lost have been pretty close affairs. We are capable of making further improvements which will give us a realistic chance of being competitive this season.
