Saints boss Hughes puts the boot into his old club
team of this generation, like United and Liverpool before and Chelsea and Arsenal in between. It is up to everybody else to try to stop that. “Irrespective of all the resources at any one time you can only play 11 players. “You might have 11 exceptional players, but the teams around you might have that as well. “Now the Premier League is not a British life, the mindset has to be that you want to improve.
“We’ll see what we need to get better. Competition has been the strength of this club for a long time, so they will bring in whoever they need to bring in and it will make us better again.”
City have now finished above United for five successive seasons since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. Kompany said: “Sir league or a European league, it is a world league.” Saints all but guaranteed topflight survival by beating Swansea on Tuesday, barring a heavy defeat to City and a big win for Swansea at home to Stoke.
Hughes believes the South Coast club’s struggles this season should act as a warning to the rest of the division.
Saints finished eighth last term and reached the EFL Cup final but have won just seven of their 37 games.
Hughes, who replaced Mauricio Pellegrino in March, said: “For how difficult this season has been, maybe
it’s for the best. Alex spent such a long time at United that there was always going to be a period of time when they were going to need to get back on their feet.
“We send Sir Alex all best wishes. We hope he gets better and recovers well.
“In terms of the two clubs, he was successful for 25 years and what we have achieved doesn’t change anything too much. I still It makes people understand you have to keep your eye on the ball and you can’t make too many mistakes.
“If you get into that spiral of losing games it’s very difficult to shake yourself out of it.
“We’ve been able to do it at the end, thankfully, and we have got one more game to go.
“It’s not easy. Every game in the Premier League is difficult.
“It’s an old cliche but true when you see a season like we’ve had.
“From sixth position down everyone is at risk.” think that any season, if United get it right, it is a 50-50 season between us in terms of being the powerhouse in Manchester.
“I definitely enjoy that there is a lot of balance in this town now.”
Guardiola is likely to give Phil Foden, 17, a run-out today so that he can secure himself a title medal with his fifth Premier League appearance of the season.