Manchester City: De Bruyne dazzles on return
Manchester City: De Bruyne dazzles on return
Transcript
00:00 Michael, for Manchester City, Kevin De Bruyne is back and certainly straight back into the action
00:04 with a bang. At St James' Park he had 20 or so minutes and in that time scored an assist
00:10 and Manchester City took all three points. Surely now with him being back,
00:15 Man City's title aspirations go up a notch? Yeah, I think so. I think it's been the big
00:21 question mark all season, really in terms of the title race, that what will Man City be like when
00:25 they get Kevin De Bruyne back? Certainly the early signs are very encouraging. I was at the
00:31 Huddersfield match the week before and he came off the bench for the last 20 odd minutes. He was
00:36 absolutely brilliant in that game. It's against a championship opponent and there was nothing
00:39 riding on the game but he was brilliant in that and then he came on against Newcastle,
00:43 he was just superb. I mean, there's not many players in the Premier League that could have
00:47 scored the goal he scored and I would say there's only one other player in the Premier League who
00:51 could have completed that pass he did for Oscar Bob's goal. That was just out of this world,
00:56 that pass and the touch from the ball to the controller and the finish from Bob were outrageous
01:01 as well. But look, I think from a City perspective the encouraging thing would be that not only do
01:06 you have arguably the greatest Premier League player ever back in the ranks, you have someone
01:12 who can provide goals, assists, it gives them a bit more impetus in terms of attacking options.
01:18 But I think the most encouraging thing against Newcastle was they felt the collective kind of,
01:23 'Right, we've got the main man back now, we can win now.' You could almost see the players just
01:28 elevate themselves a little bit more and they seem more confident, they seem to have more belief in
01:32 themselves once the brainer came on and that's the big encouraging thing in my eyes, that not
01:37 just you've got this fantastic player but the belief that he brings with it as well. So I think
01:41 that's a big question mark as we go into the second half of the season for City. Look, I still
01:47 believe they're not playing at their best, I think they're far off how they were playing,
01:51 let's say from about February to April time, February to May last year maybe. They're a
01:57 decent bit off that in my eyes. I think defensively they're just making too many mistakes, conceding
02:02 too many sloppy goals. I mentioned that Huddersfield game earlier, even in that Huddersfield
02:07 were gifted an absolutely brilliant one-on-one chance because Diaz made a mistake. Yeah, there
02:13 is a concern and they're not controlling games as they did this time a year ago. Again, you would
02:18 point at De Bruyne and come on back and say 'right, is that going to change?' but yeah, I think that
02:23 there's plenty of reasons for encouragement and look, my money would still be on City to
02:28 win the title personally.