'He can still get better.' Vincent Kompany on why he wants more from David Fofana

The 21-year-old’s smart finish came after he squandered two guilt-edged chances on the stroke of half-time, one of which will almost certainly be in the running for miss of the season.

“He can still get better,” said Kompany. “That’s what we want to do with him, because he scored one but he could have scored two or three.

“For probably 45 minutes he gave us what we needed defensively but the other 45 minutes he could have done more. But I think we’re going to back our players, we’re going to support them and make sure they make that progress.”

Before the Brentford game, the Clarets boss said the Premier League this season was more of a ‘striker’s league’. When asked to elaborate, he said: "It’s just every game I’m watching. I’m not seeing a lot of defenders handling their opponents at the moment. It doesn’t matter who you play, if you watch the Tottenham strikers the amount of times they get in, if you watch every team.

“I think it’s good for football but there’s more runs in behind, so it’s also a little bit more difficult to just sit back and defend because teams tactically understand how to create overloads and how to pin you in.

“Every time has good principles of reacting to losing the ball, recovering the ball, transition again. That counter-press, it only used to be Liverpool doing it but City were one of the teams doing it as well, but now every team counter-presses.

“That means if you just invite them to come, it’s harder to get out than it used to be. Even on transitions. I guess by default teams are going more aggressive and pressing high. They’ve got the profiles to do that because every player can run 12km or 12.5km, 1,200m high intensity, some of them 600-700m sprints.

“I’m watching throughout the league. You have teams like Bournemouth and they’ve got Solanke and Semenyo, teams like Fulham have Raul Jimenez, Wolves have got Cunha and so on, they’ve got proper high-quality players up front. The spaces get bigger because you have to, but the strikers are of a high calibre. You just have to look at Brentford, you’ve got Ivan Toney up front, Wissa, Mbuemo.

“We’ve also got a few guys who can hurt opposition teams but every team has got that. Brighton has Evan Ferguson and so on. You keep going.

“I do remember, as I was playing, teams could have an advantage defensively and exploit that. But that just doesn’t seem that way to me anymore. Maybe you guys will analyse it in more depth and say it’s not true, but when I look at every game it seems to be that way.”