Manchester City: Premier League champions target dominance

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Man City will own the future - Kompany

Manchester City are targeting an era of dominance after winning their second Premier League title in three years.

Manuel Pellegrini's side beat West Ham to seal their fourth English league title on the final day of the season.

"Big teams cannot be satisfied with one title," said Pellegrini. "This club and players deserve more titles."

Captain Vincent Kompany added: "We are not a team that wins trophies every now and again. If you want to be a big club this must be one of so many."

At the start of March, City had already won the Capital One Cup, and were in contention for four trophies before defeats by Barcelona in the last 16 of the Champions League and Wigan in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.

The quadruple may have eluded him in his first season in English football, but the Chilean felt his side's fightback to pip Liverpool to the title may not have happened if they had stayed in every competition.

"It has been a brilliant season," added Pellegrini. "We were involved in all four competitions for longer than any other English team, and we won two of them as well so I am very happy.

"It was a disappointment to go out of Europe when we did and the Wigan defeat was tough to bear.

"But when you consider that we played 14 or 15 games more than Liverpool in the entire season then maybe if we had gone further than we did, I would not be sitting here speaking about winning the Premier League."

Pellegrini feels the keys to their title triumph were his players' trust in his attacking approach that helped them score 102 league goals, and also the fact they did not give up after what looked a decisive defeat against Liverpool last month.

"There were two key moments in the season," he added. "One of them was at the beginning of the season when we had just four points from our first six away games. That is not too many points for a team that wants to win the title.

"At that moment, I spoke to the players and they said they believed in the way we were working, and that we should continue playing in the same way.

"I felt that too, because I did not think we had deserved to lose those points. From that moment until the end of the season I think we are the team that has taken more points playing away, so it was very important to carry on playing that way.

"The second moment was after the Liverpool game, when we did not deserve to lose 3-2.

"We never gave up hope that Liverpool could also lose points. We struggled in a difficult game against Sunderland straight afterwards when we could only draw, so it was not the best week but the team was never resigned to losing and we won our last five games to show our character."

Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,

City scored 102 Premier League goals this season - just one short of Chelsea's record

Pellegrini gave credit to his predecessor Roberto Mancini, who was manager when they won the FA Cup in 2011 and the title in 2012, for ending the club's 35-year wait for a major trophy but said he had stamped his own style on the squad he inherited.

"We changed absolutely everything about the way this team plays," he explained.

"It was very important to have the trust of the players when I changed from the way they played before. It was not easy. Maybe if I had not won the title, it would have been a very good reason because it was my first year in the Premier League and I had to change a lot of things.

"But during the whole season I never wanted to have an excuse. I just tried to play in the way I think this team must play, and it has been a season that everybody has enjoyed - the fans, players and me also."

City will parade their trophies on an open-top bus tour around Manchester on Monday evening before the whole squad flies to Abu Dhabi on Tuesday to meet the club's billionaire owner Sheikh Mansour.

By then City are likely to have learned their punishment from Uefa for breaching financial fair play regulations, with the club facing a possible £50m fine and other sanctions.

"It is very important to celebrate but we will start working for the next season on Tuesday," added Pellegrini.

"Now that we have won the title we are going to do a balance of the year, and look at the positive and negative things and where we can improve the squad.

"As a big team, that is the way we must continue thinking.

"It was a beautiful season but you always need to continue winning and continue improving. We will start working as soon as possible to be the strongest team next year."

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