CAPITAL ONE CUP I KNOW I WITH CITY’S STARS
FABIAN DELPH admits the pain of his Wembley humiliation is driving him towards cup glory with Manchester City.
Delph was in the Aston Villa team thrashed 4-0 by Arsenal in last season’s FA Cup Final.
The England midfielder was also booked in the shambolic defeat and admits it was one of the most hurtful experiences of his career.
Now he is on a mission to make amends by helping City get to another major final in the Capital One Cup.
He will be hoping to keep his place in Manuel Pellegrini’s side for tonight’s quarter-final visit of Hull.
Looking back to last season’s disappointment, he said: “Getting there was an achievement in itself, with the squad we had, but it really hurt.
“We really had to fight to get there and we felt sharp for the final.
“It wasn’t a great squad, but there was a good togetherness and it was a massive achievement for the club, especially with the state it was in.
“We stayed safe from relegation in the end and got to the final.
“But that’s all in the past now. I’m looking forward with a new set of team-mates who I’m really enjoying playing with.
“I’m here to win trophies and I see no reason why I’m not going to do that with the squad that we’ve got.”
Delph quit Villa in the summer to join City in an £8m deal but has struggled to make an impact so far following a series of niggling injuries.
He had to wait until Saturday to make his first Premier League start in a 3-1 home win over Southampton and marked it with a goal. He knows he will have to fight hard to prove himself amongst a glittering array of worldclass stars, but is confident he can make his mark in a team that is fighting on four fronts this season.
Delph said: “It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster ride. I’ve had some little niggles but I’m over them at the minute, so it’s time to push on and try to improve my game.
“It’s been frustrating but I’m finally over it all. I need to kick on.
“I’ve got a lot of energy. It’s a strange thing to say, but I love running and the fans will see that about me – but my end pass is a part of my game I’d like to improve.
“There’s a lot of midfielders in this squad. Fernandinho and Fernando both love pressing, so I think I can slot in nicely with that type of player.
“Hopefully I can bring something different, I don’t know. But I’d like the other parts of my game to improve and I’m sure it will over time.
“Playing with the calibre of players here, there is not so much pressure on myself to perform as there has been in previous years.
“It’s about me slotting in where I can, but hopefully I can improve.
“On Saturday I got the goal but I made a few errors and I was a bit sloppy at times, so I need to put that right. With games, I can improve.”
City remain in the hunt for an unprecedented quadruple haul of silverware and Delph admits Pellegrini’s men believe they can beat anyone they face.
City lost against Liverpool and Juventus before getting back to winning ways at the weekend.
But besides today’s quarter-final, they are top of the Premier League and into the knockout phase of the Champions League.
He added: “We are favourites for the Capital One Cup now, and rightly so. With the squad we’ve got, you expect us to win the majority of games we play in. We’ve been through our bad spell now.
“This is a confident bunch of lads. It’s been a difficult couple of weeks, but it’s unlikely a team will go the whole season unbeaten.
“It’s just the trials and tribulations you go through, but you need to react to defeats and I think we did that against Southampton.
“When you look around the dressing room and see the talented players we’ve got, you feel confident we can overcome whatever team we come up against.”