Man City boss Manuel Pellegrini delivers injury update on Vincent Kompany

Kompany had returned to the Manchester City starting XI after an eight-game absence, only to limp off after nine minutes in the 4-1 win over Sunderland.

Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany has vowed to overcome his injury problems in an emotional message posted on social media.

Manuel Pellegrini had hoped to ease the 29-year-old back into action and introduced him once the game was won against Sam Allardyce’s Sunderland.

“We’ve played the whole season with an average of six players injured in every game”, said Pellegrini, referring to the long injury list he has had to deal with this season.

“We showed good shape, we defended well and closed the space well, but we need to improve when we want to go straight away and score the goal”.

Pellegrini is now feeling very anxious over the future of his captain given that he could now spend even more time on the sidelines and will be unable to feature against league leaders Leicester City in the upcoming round of fixtures. He’s very important. That doesn’t mean that we have to think that with Vincent we’re not going to make any mistakes, and without him we can not win. “That depends on the performances of [Eliaquim] Mangala, Otamendi and [Martin] Demichelis”. That is our big problem as a team. We can not think all the mistakes are just because Vincent isn’t playing. In contrast, the eight games that Kompany played, they managed to keep seven clean sheets, conceding only one goal in the process. A “Cruyff turn” was part of his stunning repertoire against Sunderland and he said: “When you play on the street when you are younger, you learn these tricks”.

Meanwhile, Leicester City defender Danny Simpson believes that his team has the character and spirit to put Saturday’s loss to Liverpool behind them when they host City.

Raheem Sterling gave City the lead with a header from Kevin de Bruyne’s cross before Yaya Toure’s low drive and another header from Wilfried Bony made it 3-0 before halftime. I will get on with it and when I do come back.

Allardyce’s side remain next to bottom of the Premier League, suffering a fourth successive defeat after conceding three goals in the opening 25 minutes.

“Mentally it will be hard for him”, said De Bruyne, who has been an ever-present since his August arrival. “But if we win there we are on the same amount of points and we are there on top of the table with some other teams so at the moment everything is fine”.