Last Sunday’s draw with Birmingham City may have been the Blues’ fourth consecutive league stalemate, but it was enough to move them into a Champions League place in the Barclays Premier League table.
However the skipper, who could only watch Sunday’s game due to a heel injury, thinks City’s squad has the talent to command games by playing to their strengths rather than be restricted by the opposition.
It’s a mentality that Kolo says the teams that regularly occupy the top-four berths have in abundance, and is the approach he wants City to take.
He said: “We need to impose ourselves, we have the players that can really play football. There are some gifted players in this dressing room, we can enjoy our football by passing it and controlling games. That’s what we need to achieve now, the team needs time but as time goes by we need to improve.
“City is not the team it was before, a lot of things have changed and our mentality has to change as well. We can’t be happy with a draw or drawing four games in a row. Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool would never be happy with that, which is why they have been at the top, so neither can we.
The last four games have been drawn, but with our expectations we know we can do better. We were beating Fulham 2-0 at home, but they came back and that’s not good enough.
...Kolo Toure
“When you are 2-0 up, you can’t let teams come back, that was a big mistake by us. Against Birmingham, we did not play in our style, we played the way they wanted us to play and that made it difficult for us. It was the same against Wigan, we did not really play our game.”
Kolo’s injury, picked up against Aston Villa, flared up again in the draw with Fulham, but he’s hopeful he can be available for the visit of Burnley this weekend.
He added, “The injury is getting better, I feel that I will be fit enough for the game on Saturday. I’m always disappointed when I’m injured and I can’t help out my team mates, but we have a strong squad here. As long as we have everybody together, it does not matter who plays but when you have everyone available, it makes a massive difference.
“There a few important players out injured at the moment, but if we can everybody back we’ll be even stronger. You need that if you want to at the top of this league, because there are some really tough teams out there.”
