THE ETERNAL CITEH
De Bruyne warns rivals the rampant Blues will fight to rewrite the Prem history books
KEVIN DE BRUYNE has warned relentless Manchester City are determined to write their names into Premier League record books.
Pep Guardiola’s champions elect have the chance to make history and overtake Chelsea’s record 95 points tally when they won the title in 2005. City have got 75 points, can take another step towards Premier League glory by beating Chelsea and, with 10 games left, they can mark themselves down as the best of all time.
Midfielder De Bruyne said: “We want to win every game, every time. One at a time, if we win every game we will probably beat that, but it is tough.
“We want to be champions, we are trying to achieve that. If it’s possible in the next five games that would be nice because then we can concentrate on the Champions League.
“But obviously it’s so tough, we have a lot of big games coming up, so we will see. If we can win on Sunday it would be a beautiful week for us.
“We cannot let the level drop anyway no matter who we are playing. It is a tough week with Arsenal twice and Chelsea. Twice we did well and now we have to move on to the next.
“It’s very hard. It’s not only physically tough, it’s mentally tough. Sometimes when you win a lot of games you let the standards drop a little bit but I didn’t get the feeling all season.
“We need to maintain that for another two months. But there is the same feeling from the players from the start of the season – we are all together.
“It is so tough for everyone. There are six teams and everyone wants to be champions. So in the end there is always going to be two who are devastated because they are not in the Champions League and even five teams who are devastated they are not champions.”
Defender Vincent Kompany (right, with jubilant team-mates after lifting the League Cup) claims the foundations of this season were actually laid down last year amid the disappointment of Guardiola finishing the campaign emptyhanded.
The Blues skipper said: “There’s no doubt in my mind Pep deserves more than he’s even attributed to for how we’ve developed as a team.
“It’s entirely his vision, his work and we have the responsibility to bring it across on the pitch which is obviously not nothing.
“There’s a lot of leadership that’s helped us to get this far. Last season is something that I will always argue about because I don’t think we had a bad season.
“A lot of what we’ve done this season has been developed out of what we did last season.
“We were getting punished in many ways, like what happened against Wigan in the FA Cup, where they had one chance and scored and we had plenty of chances we missed. That happened throughout last season and that’s been the difference – this season we’ve scored last-minute goals and the players have raised their individual performance levels.
“I was never worried because with good players these things eventually become good.
“We still have to win more things, but as for what we’ve done, I didn’t really have any doubts because I know what a good manager can do, what a difference it can make.
“I can judge the level of players we have at this club against those at others and we’re in a good place to compete at least with the best teams in the country.
“The vision was clear, what the guys have to do is clear every time, and it’s just a case of everyone improving, but that happens over time.
“My hope is this line of improvement can continue. There’s nothing to suggest this is the limit for us and it’s exciting because we’re going into uncharted territory.”