Manuel Pellegrini has admitted to not being happy with Yaya Touré’s form this year, although the Manchester City manager defended the midfielder as he believes the champions’ slump is not the fault of one player.
City host West Ham United on Sunday having dropped from joint-top on New Year’s Day to fourth place. Touré has attracted criticism for his uneven displays and although Pellegrini conceded that he and the Ivorian are not content he robustly defended the 31-year-old.
Pressed that Touré’s statistics are down on last season, Pellegrini said: “I don’t think he’s happy with his performance this year – and nor am I. But we must support him and return him to his normal performance. Maybe if we play without Yaya when he was at the Africa Cup and we’d won all the games, then he comes back and we start losing, maybe then you think that. Yaya needs support, he’s a very important player and he will have my support till the end of the season.”
Asked if Touré needed to be stood down because of staleness, the manager said: “He doesn’t need a break. For a lot of reasons he’s not the same player he was last season but he continues being a very important player for our team. It’s very easy when you don’t get the results to single out one player but remember in January [when Touré was on international duty] people said we were one player and it was Yaya.
“That’s when we started with bad results – it was just because this team was Yaya. The only player we had was Yaya and without him we couldn’t win – I don’t think it was true. He’s not playing well in parts of the game. But in some parts he is playing well and he will continue playing.”
City are four points ahead of fifth-placed Liverpool and a further point better off than Southampton, who are sixth. Pellegrini did not wish to discuss the implications of failing to qualify for the Champions League, saying the campaign would be discussed when it was over.
“Every time you finish the season you must analyse, winning or losing,” he said. “I don’t think if we lost the next six games it will be the same analysis as if we win the next six games. Maybe winning the six games you finish second, maybe losing the six you finish eighth, so it is impossible to make the same analysis. After that you must review the whole season. I don’t think in a negative way. We are still in the Champions League places. That’s why I am telling you that these six games are so important, to make sure we are in the Champions League. It’s easy for a big team not to be in it – [Manchester] United last year. There are four or five strong teams here. Of course, it’s important for the project to be in the Champions League and I hope we will win on Sunday and be in the Champions League.”
Pellegrini denied that opponents had worked out how City now play. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Every manager knows how we work, how we play. The problem we have this year is that we’ve scored 26 goals less; it’s not because we are not creating chances. If we never created chances, maybe we’d change the system but we always do.”
