Joe Hart is unhappy Manchester City can be sluggish in games, saying it should not be that the “dragon needs to be poked before we come out of the cage”. Manuel Pellegrini’s side are at Arsenal on Monday and the goalkeeper is clear they will need to improve if they are to defeat Arsène Wenger’s side.
City are third in the Premier League, won their Champions League group and are in the Capital One Cup semi-finals. Yet Hart concedes they are not playing as well as they can. Last Saturday they required an added-time winner from Yaya Touré at home to Swansea City after Bafétimbi Gomis equalised in the final minute of normal time.
Hart is pleased with the side’s character but said: “It’s a shame it needs the dragon to be poked before we come out of the cage. We know what we’ve got here and it’s frustrating when we don’t do it, but it’s a long season and we’ve got ourselves into a good place.”
Arsenal are a place and point ahead of City. “We need to be a million per cent better,” Hart added. “We need to step up. We can be awesome when we want to be so we need to be more consistent – that’s what we’re looking for.”
City have played five matches in 15 days but Hart dismisses talk of tiredness. “We used that excuse last week [after losing at Stoke City] so we can’t use it again this week. We probably were but it’s not an excuse I will use. I refuse to use that. It’s easy for me to say that in goal but I don’t think the lads would want to use it either.
“We didn’t play well [against Swansea] but we won. We’ve actually got a few days now before we play another game and we have to use that time wisely. We have to get our heads together and start playing properly again.
“I think about it now and we’re [near the] top of the league, we went through in the Champions League as group winners, we’re in the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup. We’re in a good place, we just need to start performing as we know we can. At least seven, eight of us. We know every couple of weeks people will have off-days.”
The victory over Swansea was the fifth late, late win of the season. “It’s nice that we’ve got that but we need to be seeing games out more and not relying on that,” he said.
Hart’s own form has been impeccable for City and England. “I just want to do well, I just want to perform,” he said. “I’m 28 now and I’ve plenty of experience behind me. I want to kick on. I don’t want to settle for what I’ve done. I want to keep improving for all the teams I play for. I want to be playing every game. I want to make it difficult for the manager to leave me out of any game. I appreciate it’s a squad – Willy [Caballero] does fantastic around this place and with England we have some good keepers. It’s tough to stay as the No1, but I enjoy it.”
Vincent Kompany continues to be unavailable because of his third calf problem of the season. It is his 30th separate injury or illness since he joined City in August 2008. As Pellegrini did earlier this season, Hart acknowledged the side are becoming accustomed to having the captain absent due to his continuing maladies.
“We appreciate that now with Vinny we are not getting to get 60 games a season out of him,” said Hart. “He’s put himself through the mill, he’s 29 years old now, he’s played about 4,000 games [sic] and he’s had the same amount of operations. As a squad with him in it you have to appreciate there’ll be games when he can’t play now. You appreciate him when he does play and you want him to be in the best condition he can be.”
