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Manchester City do still have a chance of winning the Premier League title this season, despite what everyone will tell you. That chance is Kevin De Bruyne.
The champions finally broke the longest winless run of Pep Guardiola’s coaching career with a rather unconvincing victory over high-flying Nottingham Forest, in a performance still riddled with nerves and mistakes.
But, after his manager refuted claims he had fallen out with the man who has been as key as any to the Guardiola City movement, De Bruyne proved the fire is still burning with a goal and an assist to drag his side out of the mire once more.
It was a statement performance that put pay to the growing army of naysayers who feel, somewhat understandably given he has won all there is to win and some in Manchester, that De Bruyne’s heart just isn’t in it anymore.
As City’s backline parted like the Red Sea at times in the first half, with Forest wasting some glorious openings to give Guardiola further sleepless nights, De Bruyne took the match away from the visitors with two clinical contributions that a profligate champions have been missing of late as their star man regained his full fitness.
The most pertinent takeaway from a potentially season-saving evening at the Etihad was that De Bruyne kept coming, and coming, just as City have made their calling card during their unrelenting hostile Premier League takeover.
De Bruyne’s fitness concerns and his teammates’ continued struggles to regain any semblance of their former selves ensures the chance of his rescue act having a trophy-laden ending remains very much an outside bet. Keep him fit and it is certainly worth a flutter.
The scoreline suggests City are very much back, a first league victory by a three-goal margin or more since August – a lifetime in Pep years.
Forest, however, will be heading home feeling somewhat aggrieved. City were good value for their early lead, given to them by Bernardo Silva – netting his first league goal since January on the end of De Bruyne’s perfectly-placed headed assist.
Chris Wood, who can do no wrong this season, should have levelled, however, after the City backline were caught napping once more on the half hour mark, the New Zealand hitman somehow stroking the ball wide when clean through.
One of the many areas City have laboured in of late is their inability to punish teams for not making the most of the growing number of chances the champions are conceding. A fully fit De Bruyne saw to that.
His emphatic strike when afforded far too much space in the Forest penalty area, a first goal since August, was not the mark of a man without fire still burning strong in his belly.
Even with a two-goal lead, City’s nerves at the back were palpable. Rodri’s absence needs no further analysis, but with Ilkay Gundogan a shadow of his former self since returning to England, a jittery backline looked vulnerable in the extreme, with little protection ahead of them, for the remainder of the opening period.
Come the second half, and the visitors’ moment had passed, with City able to kill the tempo of the game as they like to do when in the ascendancy at home.
De Bruyne could have had another couple in the second half, but settled for his two goal contributions before leaving the pitch, after Jeremy Doku had added a third, to a standing ovation.
Guardiola made sure, always aware where the cameras are pointing on him, to be the first to congratulate his talisman. It may well be his last season in England, with no sign of pen being put to paper and the monetary temptations of MLS or Saudi Arabia looming, but De Bruyne’s influence is certainly not on the wane. Anything but.
