Mr. Reliable?Times City’s Captain, Vincent Kompany proved he has more to offer for the club

Vincent Kompany is not your ordinary player, his contribution to the making of the club to it’s current status is one that cannot be wished away having been with them for the last eleven seasons, he has come through for the club when most needed and overcome the barriers.

He might not be someone you can call on every week, but Vincent Kompany has shown enough when it counts of late to prove he is far from finished at Manchester City.

Injuries continue to plague the 32-year-old, but it’s not the quantity of games that are defining Kompany now, it’s the quality of them. City’s captain remains a rock for Pep Guardiola, a leader on and off the pitch and a reliable foot soldier when he’s called into action.

Kompany is yet to sign a new deal and extend his Etihad stay into a 12th season, but there’s no fear he will go elsewhere this summer. Leading by example, the central defender is focused on a potentially record-breaking end to the campaign first. Signing that new deal can wait.

It’s not so long ago that there was a suggestion City could cut ties with their captain this summer, that Kompany could even walk away from the game. But over the past couple of weeks he’s again shown just how important he is to this team. It would be a huge surprise if he didn’t stay now.

In three of City’s last four games Kompany has stepped in off the bench for the Blues, replacing the red-carded Nicolas Otamendi at Schalke and then the injured Aymeric Laporte in the Carabao Cup final and John Stones at Bournemouth. In between that he played 90 minutes in the Premier League win over West Ham.

It was what he said about his contract after Saturday’s win on the south coast that summed up Kompany’s attitude to City, and why he’s so respected in the dressing room, in the corridors of power and by the fans.

“There’s four competitions and I couldn’t care less about anything other than winning games at the moment. It has to be about that,” he said.”When you’ve been 11 years at the club, you’re pretty relaxed about the situation.”

He might not be able to get him on to the pitch every week now, but Guardiola knows he can still rely on Kompany when fit. He summoned him against Southampton at the end of December when City’s title defence was wobbling and again against Liverpool later that week for what was, at the time, City’s biggest game of the campaign.

Last week Guardiola said staying fit for the rest of the season wasn’t essential to earning a new deal for Kompany, which is probably good news for the Belgian. Over the last four seasons he has suffered 14 different injuries, costing him 574 days of football. It’s a staggeringly unfortunate injury record, one that has robbed one of this generation’s best central defenders of many of his prime years.

But Kompany offers so much to City than he can’t be judged purely by minutes on the pitch. He’s one of City’s greatest ever captains, someone who knits the dressing room together. As Guardiola said earlier this season, when the time does come for Kompany to hang his boots up City should make it their priority to keep him at the club in some capacity.

He’s been through too much here for City to lose that experience, but for now he remains an integral part of the playing squad, as he’s proved in recent weeks. You wouldn’t bet against City’s Mr Reliable making a defining contribution over the final months of the campaign.

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