Man City need to wake ‘the dragon’ against Arsenal – Hart

Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero has given manager Manuel Pellegrini an early Christmas present as the Argentine returned to training ahead of Monday’s crunch match with Arsenal.

However, Hart, who has played behind Kompany for virtually his entire career in Manchester, said the club would have to get used to his absences, which may become more frequent with age.

Aguero’s return will come just in time as the Blues begin another intense stretch of games, as does every professional side in England during the festive season.

Leicester, who were on the brink of relegation last season, moved two points ahead off second-placed Arsenal after Monday’s 2-1 win over champions Chelsea but Mahrez has reiterated that the team are not title contenders.

However, a number of their recent results have been unconvincing and Hart knows that City need to improve sharply against Arsenal to avoid slipping off the pace. We need to step up.

City have conceded 16 goals in the eight league games Kompany has not started, despite spending £73.5 million on other centre-backs in the last 18 months.

“It’s a shame it needs the dragon to be poked before we come out of the cage”, he added. We need to be seeing games out more and not relying on that.

“You have to appreciate there’ll be games when he can’t play now”.

“A lot of people talk about your contribution when you score and make a lot of goals, which is nice, but it’s not something I really think about. At the moment I’m fine and we’ll see how things go, but if I was feeling fatigue then I would tell the coach”.

“We’ve done well as a team and everywhere we wanted to be at this stage of the season we’ve managed to achieve – so I think we’ve done well”.