I’d like to see us dominate for 10 years, says Kompany
Captain and stalwart tells James Ducker City have work to do before being Manchester’s principal side
It is the day after Raheem Sterling claimed a dramatic stoppagetime winner for Manchester City against Southampton and Vincent Kompany, the only remaining bridge in the dressing room between the pre- and post-Abu Dhabi era, is chuckling away. Some of City’s longer-serving staff have been joking that the wild celebrations that greeted Sterling’s goal were a reaction to the club reaching 40 points, the traditional barometer of safety in Premier League, and Kompany revels in the old and new worlds still colliding nine years after a long suffering club’s fortunes were transformed.
“I tell you what, in one way the club has changed a lot – and everyone can see that,” the City captain said. “But in a way, I still feel there are a lot of things that are the same as they used to be 10 years ago – namely that reaction once we’ve got 40 points!
“One of the things that has definitely changed are these last-minute goals we are scoring. If you have been at City long enough, you know that if any last-minute goals were scored, they were scored by the other team!”
Kompany joined City three months after Manchester United had won a Premier League and Champions League double under Sir Alex Ferguson in 2008 and nine days before Sheikh Mansour kick-started a revolution. No City player has a better grasp of just how far the club have come in the intervening period.
Yet as he casts his mind towards this afternoon’s derby at Old Trafford and the prospect of moving 11 points clear of their bitter rivals at the top of the Premier League table with one of the most exciting, free-scoring sides this country has seen, Kompany resists talk of a power shift in Manchester for now. City may be on course to finish above United for the sixth time in seven seasons but the Belgian – one of the game’s more considered thinkers – says the void left by Ferguson’s retirement should not be overlooked and that there are signs of United stirring again under Jose Mourinho.
“That debate started when we beat them in the semi-final of the FA Cup [in 2011],” Kompany said. “That’s when the eager Blues started putting that debate on the table.
“A shift in power? I’d like to see us dominate for 10 years.
“At the moment, I’d say it’s about 55-45 in our favour based on recent results against United. That isn’t taking anything away from the history that a club like United has but we can only deal with the here and now. In recent years, we’ve had the edge but it has still been tight enough to call it close to 50-50.
“When the owners came into City, they decided they wanted to make this club a huge club in England. At the same time, there was a huge gap left when Ferguson left United [in 2013]. It’s been a case that as one Manchester club was going through a rebuilding phase, we were in the ascendancy.
“But it is absolutely normal that when a person has had such a big influence on a club for such a long time, there will always be a big rebuilding job to do once he has left. That’s why I am reluctant to say there has been a shift in power. They have made a huge investment to try to close the gap on us and fill the void left by Ferguson. But it is normal that it would take them a few years to steady the ship once he left.”
There are still differences, though, and Kompany says it was not lost on anyone at City how United celebrated a drab goalless draw at the Etihad Stadium last April. “I think it crossed everyone’s mind,” he said. “Again, the biggest shift really is the whole Fergie era. We played against Fergie teams and there was never a game where it was not Man United that was the dominant side, never. And if you beat them, which obviously we did, you beat them with them playing in that same way they had been playing for 20 to 25 years, so obviously now it is changing.”
Now it is City who persistently go for the jugular, who expect to dominate opponents and who will aim to do just that again today, but Kompany sounds a note of caution.
“We haven’t won anything,” Kompany said. “For all it is worth, we are just a few points ahead of them and that is it. Everything else, the style, how we play, how we get the results, it won’t matter until we have some silverware to show for it, so until then I wouldn’t be worried if I was another club. If we start winning stuff consistently, and in two or three years’ time we are having the same discussion, it is a different debate then, but not at the moment.”
Kompany is desperate to be part of the Pep Guardiola project for as long as possible. Injuries have wreaked havoc after the past few seasons but he has 18 months left on his contract and talks about “making sure those 18 months are the best they can be”, after which he hopes to remain at the club in some capacity, even if that means cutting the grass.
“I want to be involved, as a fan, as a player, as a manager, as a technical director, as a groundsman, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Whichever way the club sees me helping them out, I’ll always be around.”
Perhaps he will hang around long enough to see that power shift materialise.