Manchester City Has To Cope Without Vincent Kompany

It feels like a long time since Manchester City were unbeaten in the Premier League and were putting in the kind of performances that made it appear as if they’d win the competition at a canter. Five games into the campaign, City fans were beginning to feel like their club could make this one of the most dominant top flight seasons in the last 20 years.

But from the moment Manuel Pellegrini’s side conceded the equaliser in their 2-1 home defeat to Juventus in September, the team have been on a downward spiral — and it’s largely come because of a breakdown in the defensive stoicism that had existed up until that point.

It was kickstarted by an unfortunate incident, as captain Vincent Kompany departed injured shortly after Mario Mandzukic levelled the count at the Etihad. The quirk of the season so far is that with the skipper in the side, City have conceded a goal every 295 minutes across all competitions. Without him, that figure drops to one every 54 minutes. The difference is frankly staggering.

That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if Kompany missed one or two games a year, but he doesn’t. He’s injury prone and is almost guaranteed to be ruled out for sizeable chunks of the campaign. Despite this being painfully apparent, it still seems like there’s no contingency plan in place.

Throughout the opening five matches, it looked as though Kompany and Eliaquim Mangala had struck up an understanding — perhaps surprisingly so. Both were heavily criticised for their performances in 2014-15 where the Frenchman was a regular figure of fun for his mistakes and the Belgian couldn’t put in a solid display to save his life. Yet, at the start of this season, they were unbeatable until the skipper’s injury.

Picking two out of the three remaining senior centre-backs has proven to be difficult for Pellegrini, as each hasn’t covered themselves in glory so far. Mangala has returned to his old shaky self; Martin Demichelis now looks like he’s a yard off the pace of every match he plays; while Nicolas Otamendi seems to have a mistake in him every week. Of the options, the latter is the most solid, but he’s not been at his best when the captain has been absent either.

For a club that’s spent over £70 million on two centre-backs across the last two summer transfer windows and one that knows Kompany will be unavailable for large spells, it seems odd that the defensive situation has been ignored.

That Pellegrini’s men can’t get a clean sheet without the Belgian is a worrying statistic — and a damning one for the Chilean, who as a former defender himself, should have an understanding of what to do to keep things tight at the back.Instead, without Kompany orchestrating who should step up or drop deep, the back four looks like they’ve never even met each other before.