Burnley never felt full Steven Defour impact after £8m agreement: View | OneFootball

Burnley had to make some clever additions to their squad to compete with the rest of the Premier League after promotion in 2016.

Sean Dyche's side were the champions of the second tier in 2015/16 but needed to avoid repeating the failures of the 2014/15 top-flight season, after being relegated following an impressive promotion campaign the year previous.

In came Jeff Hendrick for a club record £10.5m from Derby County, Johann Berg Gudmundsson and Nick Pope from Charlton Athletic, and Jon Flanagan and Patrick Bamford on loans from Liverpool and Chelsea respectively but one transfer caught the headlines as Dyche strayed away from his usual norm of signing UK-based players.

That was central midfielder Steven Defour, who arrived from Anderlecht on a three-year deal for a sizable fee of £8 million – a club-record fee at the time – with high hopes that he could bring his Belgian international and Champions League pedigree to the Clarets.

Defour spent three seasons at Turf Moor and while he showed some signs of his clear ability and was liked by fans and boss Dyche alike, he had several persistent injuries that prevented the Clarets seeing the best of him week in, week out.

Defour was inconsistent for Burnley

Once thought of as the 'the next big thing in Belgian football,' Defour had built a reputation for being a fiery, controversial figure in his spells with Genk, Standard Liege, Porto, and Anderlecht, and became Burnley's record signing upon his arrival, for a figure that was beaten by Jeff Hendrick later that same month.

He started life at Turf Moor in fine fashion - he assisted Andre Gray for the second goal of a 2–0 home win over Liverpool on his Burnley debut, then netted his first goal for the club with a stunning strike against Hull City in his third appearance and provided a brace of assists two weeks later in a 2-0 win over Watford.

Defour started 15 of the club's first 23 league outings of the season, but was unable to complete a full 90 minutes in that time due to fitness issues and soon picked up a hamstring injury in late January that ruled him out of the next six games - he then featured just three more times in the final 15 games to curtail a mixed debut season.

He was much more influential in the first half of his second season, starting in all of the club's first 24 league games of the campaign and netting a brilliant free-kick in a 2-2 draw at Old Trafford in December 2017, in what was surely the crowning moment of his Clarets career.

Just over a month later, a cartilage problem in his knee ended his season prematurely and ruled him out of the 2018 World Cup with Belgium - he later admitted to The Athletic that his injury issues made him question his future in football.

He said: “You are constantly thinking about life and football. If you are back in training and you are still feeling pain and you don’t get to the level you want to be at, then you are asking the question of, ‘Do I have to continue? Is it really worth going through all of this pain to play if I can’t be the person I want to be on the pitch?'

“You have a long-term injury, so you have to set yourself goals but as you go through the stages, you still feel pain. It is the lowest you can be."

The then-30-year-old returned to action in October 2018, but suffered another knee injury after just six games back, then returned to feature in two FA Cup games in January 2019 - the second of which, a 5-0 defeat to Manchester City, was his last appearance in a Clarets shirt.

He had suffered a new calf injury that needed surgery and Burnley agreed to terminate his contract, which had 10 months remaining on it, in June, so he could return to his homeland for personal reasons.

Defour has admitted that it was "difficult" to leave Turf Moor because he loved the fans, but it was the correct decision for all parties given his personal issues.

He clearly had fantastic talent that could maybe have been seen more regularly had he been a few years younger when he signed and even remains popular among the Turf Moor faithful but simply struggled to show it due to his constant injury struggles.

That sentiment was even echoed by Sean Dyche, who spoke about the Belgian when he was asked about the most talented player he had worked with by former Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster on his podcast in 2022.

Defour's career after Burnley

Defour signed a one-year deal with Royal Antwerp, which brought him closer to home after leaving the Clarets, but he was limited to just 11 appearances in the Pro League for The Great Old before leaving to see out his career at boyhood club K.V. Mechelen.

He made 19 appearances for Mechelen in 2020/21 and hung up his boots at the end of the season, becoming an assistant coach at the club and then later head-coach in October 2022, lasting just over a year in charge before being relieved of his duties with the club in the relegation zone in November 2023.

He got the chance to return to Burnley in 2022 to shadow their staff as part of his coaching development course and declared that it 'felt like coming home'. To Defour, the biggest impact made may not have been his on-pitch performances, but more how the Clarets fans took to his style of playing and made him feel like one of their own.

The Clarets never quite felt the effect of the £8m signing but the Belgian is still a popular figure in that part of East Lancashire.