Has Pep Guardiola Given Up On Injury-Prone Kompany?

Watching Manchester City at the moment is a slightly curious business. Up front, they’re all speed and vim, rapid passing matched with even more rapid running. A front five of Gabriel Jesus, Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling, David Silva and Leroy Sane is, to say the least, impressive. You know things are in decent shape when Sergio Aguero is a useful reserve and Kelechi Iheanacho, scorer of six goals in nine starts, can barely get a sniff.

At the back it’s a different story. Of the Premier League’s top seven, only Liverpool have a worse defensive record than them, and Middlesbrough, 16th and two points off the relegation zone, have conceded two goals fewer.

Almost more than the statistics is the sense of impending chaos: The reluctant demotion of Claudio Bravo may have stopped every back pass and shot on target from feeling like a fast drive on a slim mountain path, but the rest are hardly secure, either. Bacary Sagna, Pablo Zabaleta and Gael Clichy are past their prime; Nicolas Otamendi seems allergic to staying on his feet; Aleksandar Kolarov is nobody’s idea of a secure centre-half; John Stones remains a work in progress. Fernandinho, turning into Guardiola’s Swiss Army knife, has been used in both full-back positions.

In fact, the only secure thing about City’s defence seems to be the comforting thought of Vincent Kompany returning to restore some calm and order. Kompany is not just an excellent defender, he exudes the authority that might help Stones, Kolarov, Otamendi and perhaps even Eliaquim Mangala improve. “Stones needs a Vincent Kompany next to him,” said Rio Ferdinand, a man who knows central-defensive partnerships, recently.

Will that day ever come? Kompany was on the bench for City’s last four league games and played their entire FA Cup tie against Crystal Palace. He looked certain to start the next one against Huddersfield, but was missing from the squad in the 0-0 draw at the John Smith’s Stadium. Pep Guardiola confirmed, with a slightly concerning vagueness, that the Belgium international was out due to a “leg problem.” The manager played things down afterward, claiming it was “not a big issue,” but it’s still a significant cause for concern. His reassurance might be easier to accept if this wasn’t part of a pattern.

Kompany has completed 90 minutes twice this season: once at Swansea in the EFL Cup and that Palace game. In the league, he came on for a minute against Everton in October, lasted 78 minutes before being taken off against Southampton and 37 in another game against Palace, but again he had to be withdrawn. He also started against Manchester United in the EFL Cup, but once more his fitness only lasted until half-time.

“He told us he was tired and not ready to play the second-half,” said an exasperated-looking Guardiola after the latter game. The manager had earlier said that Kompany’s “head was not ready” after his previous, lengthy time out.

Kompany started 13 league matches last season, missing the rest thanks to a persistent calf injury in the autumn, then a groin strain and thigh injury late in the campaign. Just like Guardiola this weekend, then-City manager Manuel Pellegrini played things down. “I don’t think it’s an important injury,” he said after the first calf strain in Sept. 2015. “It’s just a precaution.”

After that “precaution” Kompany was out for a month, returned for three weeks, missed six weeks, came on as a substitute but lasted nine minutes, then missed another six weeks. He had to be substituted early in two of his last four games. The season before saw another couple of month-long absences. The last time he was fit to start more than six games in a row was two years ago.

The really troubling thing could be that Kompany is picking up different injuries. After the calf and hamstring strains of the previous campaign, a thigh problem kept him out of the early weeks of this season before a bad knee saw him miss another 12 games. Now, we have this “leg” issue. This is a classic sign of an ageing player falling apart, where one injury impacts on the next and makes recovery all the trickier. Kompany won’t be 31 for a few weeks and is not that old for a defender, but he made his debut for Anderlecht aged 17 and has over 500 senior appearances to his name. There are plenty of miles on his clock.

So at what point do City give up on a player whose fitness cannot be trusted? The bad news for Kompany is that they may already have done so.

“I think he’s fit now,” said Guardiola last week, when asked why the defender hadn’t played against Swansea. Guardiola then gave a fairly detailed and potentially plausible tactical explanation before adding a qualifier that sounded like praise, but suggested he’s not exactly counting on Kompany. “I know how well he can play and of course we are going to use him in some special games.”

This might be simply a way of easing Kompany back, of recognising that it could have been an overeagerness to return from previous injuries that made his problems worse. But it was difficult to escape the feeling that this was a manager who knew he couldn’t rely on a player and was making other plans.

City could do with getting Kompany back in his prime to bring a little order to their defence. The trouble, though, is that his prime has probably disappeared, and any thought that he could return could be simple nostalgia. Indeed, at the moment having him as a semi-reliable first-team presence looks like a pipe dream, never mind a peak Kompany to solve all of their defensive problems.

“I don’t know,” said Guardiola in January, when asked if he thought Kompany could get back to his best. “It is a good question. It is not the first time we have talked about that.” For a manager who wants control as much as Guardiola does, the uncertainty around Kompany’s fitness might see the end of the defender’s time at City. And perhaps Guardiola is right, too.