Ivory Coast and Manchester City striker Wilfried Bony has vowed to get back to scoring ways while aslo revealing how his love of music has kept him going through injury woes and his conversation with Pep Guardiola before his loan move to Stoke City.
The former Swansea City star can reel off his setbacks as quickly as he can describe his goals and is keen to remain in the Premier League.
He remembers in detail the form that made him the Premier League’s top scorer in 2014, most of his strikes instinctive, one-touch finishes. Then came the fitness and health problems.
When City team-mate Vincent Kompany crocks you in training, you know it is a run of awful luck. Bony has been in a recording studio helping young musical talent but he is desperate to get back on song in front of goal.
He said: “When I was at City, I never passed one month without an injury. There was always something. I had never been injured like this since I started playing football. Never. It was a bad moment.
“It was malaria first, which is why I did not go to Indonesia with the team in pre-season. I trained and was first in Marbella with my personal coach.
“We realised I had malaria so we couldn’t train how we wanted. Then we came to the UK and the tests showed everything had gone but I didn’t go to Indonesia as it was too hot there and they said maybe I could get it again.
“So I stayed and continued training with the second team. When the team returned, we went to Germany to play against Stuttgart and there my finger was broken.
“They asked me if I wanted an operation but I said ‘no’ as the season was starting in two weeks. So I played all season with it. That season my body was suffering, then it was complicated for me to stay. There was the hamstring against Juventus. Against Barca I had a foot broken.
“I got caught by my own player in training, Vincent! This is football, there are ups and downs and I believe I have passed my difficult time.”
Bony was injured — and lonely — when he first joined Dutch outfit Vitesse Arnhem from Czechs Sparta Prague earlier in his career. But the switch from Swansea — where he hit those 18 league goals in 2014 — to City was new territory, as a big-money Prem ace with a £28million price-tag on his head.
He says music helped him through the bad times, which is why he has just launched his project to help budding artists.
When Pep Guardiola arrived at the Etihad as boss last summer, Bony was told his chances would be limited, so the Ivory Coast star looked for a loan move — ending up up Stoke.
“Before I left he told me he was not pushing me outside but ‘you need to play games with your profile, the way you play’.
“He said, ‘I like the way you play but I play with one striker and there are not many games where I will play two, so it will be difficult for you to play all season.
"And after the last season with injuries and not a lot of rhythm, you need to play’. That was the last conversation.”
The move to Stoke did not work out, with Bony frustrated at being frozen out by Mark Hughes. The 28-year-old has a clause in his contract allowing him to leave for the mega-money on offer in China, but he wants to stay in the Premier League.
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