De Bruyne focused on title win – not individual praise
Kevin De Bruyne insists he is not interested in individual praise as he looks to close out the title for Manchester City.
The Belgian playmaker was at his brilliant best as he struck four times in City’s 5-1 thrashing of Wolves at Molineux on Wednesday.
It maintained a stunning run of form that has now seen him score 11 times in his last 13 appearances in all competitions.
After the first half of his season was marred by fitness issues, De Bruyne has undoubtedly been the key figure as City have moved to the brink of a fourth Premier League crown in five seasons.
He is arguably now in the bestshapeofhiscareerbutthe 30-year-old is not interested in how his own performances rank.
De Bruyne said: “I think from the moment where my ankle was pain free, I have played a really good season.
“I have been consistently thinking I’ve been playing good and have also been playing games without any interruptions.
“So I’m really happy from thatpartbutit’snotreallywhat I want to do. I want to win the title and I want to get ready to win the game on Sunday. We’re not there yet and it’s going to be a really tough one, West Ham away.”
City will have a chance to put one hand on the trophy when they travel to the Lon
don Stadium.
Wednesday’sroutrestored a three-point advantage over second-placed Liverpool at the top with just two games remaining and also improved their goal difference to plus seven better than their Merseyside rivals’.
De Bruyne opened the scoring after just seven minutes and completed a sensational hat-trick of goals with his supposed weaker left foot inside 24 minutes. He added a fourth on the hour and even hit a post late on.
Healmostcreatedanother goal for Phil Foden, who also hit a post, but City did register a fifth through Raheem Sterling.
DeBruynesaid:“Ithinkwe played well and then obviouslywescoredthreequickgoals, andthatsetthetempoandthe game we wanted to play.
“I think in the second half we did really well, we controlled it. We could have scored more goals but we did what we needed to do.”
The downside for City was the loss of Aymeric Laporte in
thesecondhalfwithakneeinjury while Fernandinho also suffered a muscular problem.
The pair had been the starting centre-halves in the absence of John Stones and RubenDias.WithKyleWalker alsooutandNathanAkenotfit enough to start, City are running out of defensive options.
Wolves exploited City’s weakness in this area as they briefly pegged them back at 1-1withabreakawaygoalfrom LeanderDendonckerbutthey could not handle the potency of the attack.
Fitness coach Carlos Cachada, standing in for Bruno Lage following the manager’s positive test for Covid-19, felt it was a game to write off and move on from.
“We look at things game by game,” he said. “We lost this game but we now have Norwich and we (will) try to react (to win) as many points as we canuntiltheendoftheseason. We have six points to fight for.
“City are a top team, we understand that, and have to move on and think about Norwich.”