Manchester City’s Manuel Pellegrini: festive games will not define our season
Pellegrini says January will be crucial as side compete on four fronts Return of Vincent Kompany ‘will bring leadership and personality’
Manuel Pellegrini says he hopes Vincent Kompany, on the verge of returning to the Manchester City team after injury, stays fit for the rest of the season. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
Manuel Pellegrini believes winning the next two games – at home to Sunderland on Saturday and at Leicester on Tuesday –would greatly improve Manchester City’s position by the mid-point of the season but argues that January is going to be the crucial month in the team’s campaign on four fronts.
“By the end of January we will be able to make a more detailed analysis of what the season has to offer,” Pellegrini said. “At the end of January we will know whether we are in the Capital One final or not, whether we are still in the FA Cup or eliminated, whether we are close to the top of the table or six or eight points behind.
“I don’t think we have been as solid and consistent as we would have liked to be this season but we are still in touch and the picture could change a lot in the next month. Welost at lost at Arsenal because we made some mistakes but we still had more of the possession and more of the chances. There were a lot of things I could be optimistic about, despite the result, and it could be an important point of reflection for us to regroup and start being the team we normally are once again. We are still in all the competitions and we have some important players coming back.”
One of those is Vincent Kompany, out since early November with a persistent calf problem, and although Pellegrini is fond of stressing his squad are strong enough to cope with the absence of any single player, City usually perform better when their captain is available.
“Vincent is important to us; you cannot be the captain of the team if you are not an important player,” Pellegrini said. “Vincent brings a lot of different things: his performances, his leadership and his personality. I just hope now that he can stay fit for the rest of the season because when everyone is fit we are a much stronger team.”
Leicester City remain the team to catch and Pellegrini acknowledges they are not where they are by accident. They have only lost one league game, whereas the defeat by Arsenal was City’s fifth of the season. Before the turn of the year that is usually a bad sign in a title-chasing club. Although this topsy-turvy season may be an exception, it depends whether Leicester are going to come back to earth any time soon.
“We have the same difficulty with Leicester as all the other clubs,” Pellegrini said. “They have demonstrated with their performances why they are at the top of the table. They deserve to be but we haven’t played them yet, and once we do play them at the end of this month we can look forward to home games against Leicester and Arsenal in the second part of the season. If we can win our next two games it should set us up for the next stage.”
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