There are still three Premier League games before Christmas but Manchester City are top, David Silva is back and Kevin De Bruyne is purring like the £54m Rolls-Royce footballer Manuel Pellegrini hoped he was acquiring last summer.
Life is rosy again at the Etihad after this first league victory since Halloween, a trot that included the 4-1 humiliation by Liverpool seven days earlier. De Bruyne scored the opener, created Aleksandar Kolarov’s third and is enticed by the prospect of dovetailing with Silva. The Spaniard had missed nine games with an ankle injury before stepping out for a 15-minute cameo that was the best of news for City on a day they ended as league leaders, ahead of Leicester City on goal difference.
De Bruyne has scored three times and created six goals for City in the league. There have been seven in all for the club. The 24-year-old is a class act and he cannot wait to start tormenting defences with Silva, the player Pellegrini’s calls the “X-factor” in his City side.
Of El Mago’s return, De Bruyne said: “Obviously it’s good for us. I think it’s also good for his confidence he’s coming back – he will get some minutes, get some confidence. We didn’t play that much together, maybe two times, so then it’s really difficult for both of us [to have an understanding]. But he’s such a great player that it’s easy to play with him.”
De Bruyne and Silva have started only twice together for City, the 2-1 victory at Borussia Mönchengladbach and the 6-1 trouncing of Newcastle United in October, the game in which Silva was injured.
Silva had spoken before the defeat of Southampton of how he wants to operate alongside De Bruyne, and the Belgian said: “Everybody has his own style so I think we play almost at the same position but are very different players. It’s better to have different players who play together than to have all the same.”
Silva is a natural No10 whose importance to the side can be measured as much in how he makes life easier for the defence as he does the attack. When he is in full flow the ball is seemingly glued to his left foot, which stymies the opposition’s prospects of taking possession and threatening the shaky City defence.
De Bruyne can also run a game, but in a different way. “Yeah – I’m more direct than him, he can keep the ball a little bit more than me so the two together, that’s an advantage – we can switch different things,” he said.
In his withdrawn manner, Pellegrini praised De Bruyne. “He’s a very technical player and I always say the way we play is good for him with his style of football,” the manager said. “I hope he will continue making good assistance and working the way he did today and scoring goals is also important.
“He scored a lot of goals in Germany so we brought him here because he is a mix of a creative player and also a goalscorer.”
Will Silva start Tuesday’s Capital One Cup quarter-final against Hull City at the Etihad? “We will see. It was important for David to play these minutes,” Pellegrini added.
“It was not a muscle injury so maybe he’s not 100% in his fitness about running for the whole game, but he doesn’t have any risk to start as he doesn’t feel pain in his ankle.”
The vulnerable City backline was exposed for Southampton’s goal. The impressive Sadio Mané zipped in a cross from the right, Willy Caballero barely moved and Shane Long made it 2-1, Fabian Delph having earlier scored a first goal on his full City debut.
A concern for the home side was the sight of Sergio Agüero limping off after an hour. Having only just returned form his latest hamstring ailment, the striker may miss the trip to Stoke City at the weekend after his foot injury was revealed to be more serious than first thought, with fears that he could also miss the final group game of the Champions League against Borussia Mönchengladbach.
A year ago City were eight points behind Chelsea before embarking on a run that placed them joint top with José Mourinho’s side on New Year’s day.
De Bruyne believes his side can duplicate that run. “Hopefully,” he said. “That would be a big advantage but even if you lose sometimes I think everybody will drop points, so you don’t need to be scared when you lose a game.
“You just need to go on and to win the next game. The league is so hard, every team has so much quality, so it’s tougher to play against the lower teams because they have more quality than before.”
The visit to Stoke on Saturday will be the latest example of that in this league of weekly trials.
Man of the match Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City)
