Vincent Kompany believes Kevin De Bruyne is a “phenomenal, complete” footballer who would enhance Manchester City, with the club having lodged a £47m bid for the Wolfsburg forward.
De Bruyne wants to move to the Etihad Stadium. The proposed transfer, though, can only occur if the 24-year-old helps push it through by informing Wolfsburg of his desire to do so. The German club are adamant they are cash-rich enough not to have to sell the Belgian. This is viewed at City as being genuine rather than a negotiating stance. But if De Bruyne makes it clear to Wolfsburg he wants to depart the hope is at City that the move will happen.
Kompany, who scored City’s third goal in Monday’s 3-0 victory at West Bromwich Albion, believes De Bruyne would be a fine addition to Manuel Pellegrini’s squad. “Let’s put it this way, he definitely wouldn’t make the team weaker. Any team he goes to he will make them stronger,” said the captain. “He’s a phenomenal player. A complete player.”
Kompany admits that he was among the City players who underperformed during last term’s disappointing title defence. “Our squad can become stronger just by getting everyone in the right direction. We had so many players who just didn’t perform last season – and I was one of them. If they do perform this year it will be like having six or seven new players. Then we will have a stronger squad. But players like Raheem [Sterling], [Fabian] Delph from what I’ve seen and Patrick Roberts too, they’ll give us something different, so many options,” the defender said about three of City’s summer signings.
Of City’s display against West Brom, which was the most convincing of the expected championship challengers during the opening round of games, Kompany said: “We showed a lot of good things. For us it’s about consistency. We’ve shown what we can do, now people are going to say why can’t you do it every game? Why can’t we do it every game? Well, we have so far, it’s a 100% record. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We had good spells last season, but our consistency is what cost us. It would be nice to see us be consistent every week although you can’t be at that level every week, it’s impossible. But being consistent is important for us.”
The 29-year-old captain is not concerned City are not viewed as firm favourites for the title. “We’re happy to let other teams be the favourites. For us it’s a different position to be in, not being talked of among the favourites,” he said. “It’s a good challenge for the team. There’s a lot of hunger and desire. I thought for the first hour we were exceptional against West Bromwich Albion.”
The manner of the display surprised Kompany as City lost 4-2 to Stuttgart in their final pre-season friendly. “It’s crazy, it’s happened to us before,” he said. “We had a friendly game against Arsenal two or three years ago and we were a shambles [2013 in Helsinki]. Then we started the season on a flier. The same happened this year, we had a very bad game against Stuttgart and it just gives the necessary focus. We knew we had a lot of work to do – last week was very focused.”
