Football
Richard Jolly, ESPN.com writer 9y

Manchester City's season will depend on signings, says Vincent Kompany

Vincent Kompany believes Manchester City's fortunes this season will depend on the success of their signings.

City have had two bids for Liverpool's Raheem Sterling rejected while their other major targets are Juventus' Paul Pogba and Wolfsburg's Kevin de Bruyne.

Captain Kompany feels City require quality rather than quantity and warned them that if they fail to add top-class players, they will suffer as their rivals strengthen.

So far, the 18-year-old Turkish striker Enes Unal is City's only signing but Kompany feels much rests on their transfer-market dealings.

"It's the key to the success of any top club," he told Sky Sports.

"It's maybe not always the amount of players that come, but I think that every top club in the world will be looking to add maybe two or three quality players to make the team just that little bit stronger, and if you don't do it, then you are exposed to other teams becoming stronger.

"It's just nothing more than usual for us in the transfer window, and I'm hoping and confident that we will make the right signings.

"I'm not too much into the specifics, but there are not so many top players and there are a few clubs who will probably be after the same players.

"I think we have an attractive proposition here -- we obviously have the facilities, we have the increased capacity of the stadium and everything we want to achieve in the future. But some clubs have got the history.

"Players choose different things at times. You just can't guess."

City failed to defend their Premier League title last season, finishing eight points behind Chelsea, and Kompany admitted they made it too easy for Jose Mourinho's side.

He added: "It was a disappointment for City, it was a disappointment for every single player at the club.

"Obviously Kun [Sergio Aguero] and Joe Hart got some rewards, which still gave us a good feeling as well, but it shows what the club wants to achieve because we finished second, so there's a lot of other clubs behind us still.

"But Chelsea kind of ran away with it and it was too early, too easy, and we can't afford that any more this season.

"We have been competitive for the past four or five years now, so that won't change. But we lost the league last year - and it happens. You can't win every single year, the same as Chelsea two years ago -- they didn't win the league, we did.

"But you want it to be a tight race and whenever we won it, it was always a tight race, so we'd like to be in there at least to the end, and if we have a really good season, we can maybe change the roles a little bit and just get to the end in a confident manner."

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