Brutal brilliance of Kev could send Wolves packing
PEP Guardiola knows exactly how tough it is to face Nuno’s Wolverhampton Wanderers.
City squeezed past the thenChampionship team on penalties in a 2017 Carabao Cup tie, dropped their first points of the season to the then-Premier League newcomers in 2018 and suffered their first league home defeat for ten months in 2019. Kevin De Bruyne? Not so much. Randomly, the Belgian has not started any of City’s four games against Wolves in the past two years – he was rested for the cup game and has either been injured or not fit enough to start ever since.
City’s coach doesn’t like the idea of being overly reliant on De Bruyne. While he recently praised him for winning them the game against Arsenal, he was far happier with the team performance that the 28-year-old thrived within against Leicester.
Their success has been built on the collective rather than individual performances, and De Bruyne cannot carry the team on his shoulders every week – as shown at Newcastle.
He could feasibly make a difference against Wolves though. In both league games that they have dropped points in to Nuno’s team, the Blues have looked short of creativity, that ability that De Bruyne has to spark something out of nothing that few in the world can either match or respond to.
When the teams met in a pre-season friendly in Shanghai this summer, City’s schemer did start and was scarily good.
It was only down to poor finishing from his team-mates that they did not score in that game and after the manager concluded that here was the player that had been the best player in the Premier League for the 2017/18 campaign (whatever the awards said).
De Bruyne certainly started this campaign like a man possessed, notching eight assists (and two goals) in his first seven league games to suggest he could smash some competition records.
A few niggles – hence his absence from the team that lost to Wolves – slowed his progress but he has returned to form in recent weeks and his latest display of brutal brilliance against Leicester brought him to ten league assists – Thierry Henry’s record of 20 is firmly in sight and the debate about the best player in the league is alive again.
Guardiola may not even decide to start his star midfielder as he plans the festive schedule, but if he does Wolves will encounter something they haven’t previously had to face in a competitive game against City.
Finally, everything may align for De Bruyne to help his team through a particularly tricky test.