The Mirror’s back page on Wednesday made for distressing reading for Manchester City fans. According to Darren Lewis, City captain Vincent Kompany was dropped for the game against Leicester City because of a half-time confrontation with Brazilian midfielder Fernandinho
After a season of underwhelming football and underachievement, a rift inside the dressing room is just the latest piece of news to worry the club's supporters.
The report says the pair had to be separated, with City manager Manuel Pellegrini forced to step in to try to sort the situation out. Kompany was said to be fuelled by rage and prepared to confront anyone who crossed him, with Pellegrini unhappy with his conduct and keen to take Fernandinho's side.
Lewis believes the incident may have been the catalyst for Kompany's omission from the side that played Leicester last Wednesday.
These kinds of reports, which come via unnamed sources, are very often exaggerated or unfounded, and there’s a good chance that’s what has happened here.
Kompany is surely far more likely to have been dropped for playing below par since his return from injury in January than for confronting a team-mate during a highly charged half-time break in what was a vitally important match at Anfield.
But, even if the report is true, is it such a bad thing that Kompany and Fernandinho were involved in heated discussions? It shows, if nothing else, that they care about the team and the direction their season is taking and that they felt their first-half display at Anfield was unacceptable.
These kinds of incidents happen at football clubs across the country on a regular basis. City have done well in the post-Roberto Mancini era to keep a lid on the majority of negativity, but there will always be certain individuals prepared to leak information in an unhelpful way.
From the outside, at least, City have appeared one of the most settled Premier League clubs over the last 18 months, and one dressing-room bust-up hardly negates the positivity that has defined the vast majority of Pellegrini’s time in charge.
For Kompany, the important thing is to return to form as soon as possible. Pellegrini’s decision to rest him for the win over Leicester was a sensible one. He had been painfully out of sorts, so short of sharpness and with such a rashness in his game that he had become a liability.
It’s harder to admit when a player has been so important to a club for so many years, but he was putting City under all sorts of unnecessary pressure with his positional sense and his over-eagerness to try to win games from centre-half.
It’s far from an irreversible situation, though. Kompany is too good and too self-analytical not to return from this slump and reassert his quality. It seems unlikely a player who displays such professionalism and intelligence in everything he does could go from the finest defender in the Premier League to one who, at 28, is now facing a terminal decline.
Some time out is likely to be good for him. He needs to refocus, much like Joe Hart did last season when he was dropped for six weeks, returning in December of that campaign a far better goalkeeper than the one who had struggled so badly in the early weeks of Pellegrini’s time in charge.
Pellegrini may have his flaws, such as the tactical stubbornness that has damaged City’s season in recent weeks, but he remains a fine man manager, someone the players like and trust and who unites his squad and tries to make everyone feel included in his plans. He handles situations like the one with Kompany fairly and with great care, and usually his players respond positively.
He will be desperately hoping that is the case again here. City’s reliance on Kompany since his arrival in 2008 has been huge, and they need their captain back to his very best. This season appears to be drifting towards an underwhelming end, with their chances of silverware looking decidedly slim, but it remains vitally important that he gets back somewhere close to his best.
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