Manchester City vs West Ham: Manuel Pellegrini’s hopes of arresting slide hit by Vincent Kompany injury

City captain could miss the rest of the campaign due to a groin injury

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Manuel Pellegrini, the Manchester City manager, tomorrow embarks upon the season’s final six games, which may determine his fate, without five key first-team players and uncertain whether club captain Vincent Kompany will play again in the current campaign.

The reigning Premier League champions are denied by injury of the services of Kompany, forwards Stevan Jovetic and Wilfried Bony, in-form midfielder James Milner and defender Gaël Clichy for the visit of West Ham United at the start of a sequence of fixtures that will have a major bearing on the post-mortem to be held by the club’s Abu Dhabi-based hierarchy this summer.

“Every time you finish a season you must analyse things – whether you win or lose, that is important,” said Pellegrini. “I don’t think if we lost the next six games it would be the same analysis as if we won the next six games.If we win the next six games we maybe finish second, if we lose the next six games then maybe we finish eighth. After that, you must review the complete season, make the correct diagnostic and make the correct solution.”

Pellegrini, who has seen Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp linked with his job increasingly frequently in recent weeks, insists he is unaffected by the pressure, although the manner of last weekend’s 4-2 derby defeat at United, which featured the loss of Kompany to a groin injury, certainly did not aid his cause.

“He is injured,” Pellegrini said of his captain. “It’s very difficult to know the way you will improve if you are injured. We don’t know how many weeks he will be out for. He has a muscle injury. We don’t know if he will be fit from now to the end of the season.”

Pellegrini has also refused to comment on speculation that key players, such as under-performing midfielder Yaya Touré, will be allowed to leave in the summer and he insists the Ivory Coast international can still be a pivotal figure in the season’s closing stages.

“I don’t think he’s happy with his performance this year, and nor am I,” said Pellegrini. “But we must support him and return him to his normal performance. Maybe if we play without Yaya when he was at the Africa Cup and we’d won all the games, then he comes back and we start losing, maybe then you think that. Yaya needs support; he’s a very important player and he will have my support until the end of the season.”