Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Kompany: City to prioritise title win
MANCHESTER City captain Vincent Kompany insists tomorrow’s derby against United has to become the short-term priority even if they have unfinished business against Liverpool.
A 3-0 defeat in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final leaves Pep Guardiola’s side with a mountain to climb next Tuesday.
But before that, they have the small matter of potentially becoming the quickest side to win the Premier League title — with six matches remaining — by beating their neighbours at the Etihad Stadium.
“We’ve got one chance to do it in the Champions League. In the Premier League we’ve got plenty of opportunities to do the job,” said the Belgium international.
“We’ll make it (the Premier League) a priority now for the next three days. It’s never been like this.
“You play the league and usually go on holiday but this one feels completely different.
“Whatever happens on Saturday we will take the game extremely seriously, we know how important it is for our fans but after that we will go back to this unfinished business we have got here.
“There’s not one single person at Manchester City who believes this game is over. Not one person.
“We have to live with the consequences of this result but that’s what makes football special.
“We had a very short period of time in this game where everything went wrong but the same can happen in the next game for the opposition.
“That’s what keeps us believing we can create chances.”
Liverpool’s three-goal advantage means if they score in the away leg next week City will have to come up with five goals if they are to progress to the last four.
For a side which has scored 124 times this season that is not beyond the realms of probability.
“We can dominate like we dominated the second half,” Kompany added.
“We didn’t concede anything in the second half but the game plan didn’t change for them.
“They still tried to catch us out on counter-attacks and we just dealt with it. If 90 minutes of this can happen we will create chances and anything is possible.
“If we need to score five so be it. We’ve prided ourselves all season on being the team that we are. The second half we certainly went back to being the team that we are.
“It was just for a very short period of time we threw a lot away.”