Vincent Kompany has revealed the message Pep Guardiola gave him during Manchester City’s comfortable victory at Stoke City on Monday evening.
Guardiola was seen speaking to City’s club captain during a break of play at the Bet365 Stadium – and he was telling Kompany to be wary of Peter Crouch.
Crouch was a second-half substitute for Stoke and failed to make an impact as a sublime David Silva brace gave City their 26th league win of the season.
Asked what his manager said to him after calling him over to the touchline, Kompany told Sky Sports: ‘He hasn’t been in the Premier League for very long… He tired to explain to me what Peter Crouch was going to do.
‘But I had a good idea! It was good to bring the message across to the players.’
City could have a chance to secure the Premier League title at home to bitter rivals Manchester United later in the month.
Kompany insists that would be a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ but has urged his teammates to focus only on the club’s next fixture.
‘Every win brings you closer to your goal but we want to keep this standard until the end of the season and into the next season too,’ the Belgium defender said.
‘It’s a massive boost for us to play the game like we do. Everybody in the blue side of Manchester knows it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity [to win the title against Manchester United] but steady, it won’t be handed to us.’
Guardiola, meanwhile, hailed his team’s performance against Stoke and admitted City will be champions ‘sooner or later’.
‘We are very close now, we have 81 points which is a lot! We had a solid performance, we controlled the game and conceded no chances,’ he said.
‘Now we have three weeks off, we go to Abu Dhabi and will come back strong. It is a tough winter for everybody so we are off straight away and we look forward to the weather.
‘Today we were solid. David Silva controls the tempo. He has the skills no doubt about that but in the bad moments he is there to control the game and he is an aggressive competitor.
‘To be champions is tough, it’s complicated. Our club does not have a history of a lot of titles. As soon as possible will be better but now we can be relaxed, the players go away with their international teams. It doesn’t matter where we win it.
‘I understand that it is important to our fans to win it against United but the target is the next game at Everton. After that, if we play like today sooner or later we will be champions.’
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