The Blues are now concentrating on purely domestic matters, beginning with Sunday’s game against bottom of the table West Brom, but despite their lowly status and City’s excellent performance on Thursday the versatile Belgian knows that the Blues cannot rest on their laurels.
“It’s going to be a tough task,” he states. “The focus on Thursday was all about winning and getting into the semi-finals - it was a big challenge, but we showed that anything is possible and as long as mathematically we can get into the Europa League then we won’t allow ourselves to give up.
“Against West Brom we have to put in the same performance as Thursday, that’s what a team with ambition does. That’s the spirit that makes football enjoyable for me, even if the result is not what you wanted.”
The 23-year-old made an unexpected return to the side for last Thursday’s game, shaking off a hamstring problem to declare himself fit on the day itself. He sees his selflessness as all part of his job, commenting:
“I just felt I would be able to give something to the team for this game, so I did my best as a good pro to come back and put in a performance.
“It’s quite well documented what injuries we have had, Stevie has been in pain and Shaun has been right at the edge of what he could carry on with. So has Wayne, it has been a hard and long season for us and we are looking forward to finishing it as well as we can. Then we will have the time to build up the team, because we have showed this season that we are definitely going to be a team are going to be taken seriously.”
Vincent, signed from our most recent opponents last summer, is aware that talking about success in the future is fine but it’s consistency in the present that will start City down that road, and he concludes by saying:
“We showed against Hamburg and in other games, like Liverpool away, what we are capable of, but I will only be happy when we do it every week. Every time you don’t do it like that, it’s a waste. There are teams without the ability, but that is not the case with us. It’s right that we should be ambitious, but talking won’t give us results. We didn’t talk too much before Hamburg and we showed what we had to do on the pitch.”
