Kevin De Bruyne

De Bruyne impressed on his return to City's starting line-up against Leipzig, pulling the strings in their seven-goal victory and powering home a ...

Making good decisions and good plays, that's an unbelievable finish.' All of a sudden the shackles are off.' 'People have been critical but he was very direct today.

Manchester City produced a statement performance to beat RB Leipzig 7-0 in the Champions League, with Erling Haaland scoring five.

Otherwise another player is going to play." "He's not a player who receives the ball in the pockets and can stop. "I am going to discover Kevin De Bruyne? "Kevin is a player for the dynamics. After seven years together, I'm going to tell you how incredible he is? Intensity we have, this is the player we know.

This has been a curious season for De Bruyne, arguably City's most gifted player, but one in which he had failed to hit the exalted heights of previous ...

One of the most prestigious National Hunt Meetings of the calendar is not to be missed…and we’ve got a bumper week of amazing content and great reader offers. Celebrate the biggest racing week of the year- the Cheltenham Festival. Having started two of City's previous three games on the bench, De Bruyne was restored to the starting line-up and enjoyed a triumphant return to form to answer his critics.

Kevin De Bruyne has not been a guaranteed starter for Manchester City of late, with Pep Guardiola suggesting that he needs to get back to basics.

But I always have the belief that they will increase and get better when the simple things [are done]: like don’t lose the ball, the mobility, the incredible capacity to be active in the movement. [a two-time PFA Player of the Year](https://www.goal.com/en-gb/lists/13-fun-facts-about-kevin-de-bruyne/blt02c4e080a8fed912) and a four-time Premier League title winner, but the 31-year-old is considered to have seen lofty standards slip in 2022-23. What I’d like – I spoke many times to him – is to go to the easy principles and do it well.

David Ornstein has put Kevin de Bruyne's purported loss of form in perspective; he does lead the Premier League in assists and chance creation.

Maybe there have been fewer assists but I don’t think I’ve been creating less. For me, it is the same. But I was at the Emirates when Manchester City beat Arsenal and I thought Kevin de Bruyne was imperious. I think I’ve been playing quite well. The Athletic’s David Ornstein said on Sky Sports: “The World Cup has clearly affected De Bruyne in some way because his numbers are down. If they do it, you suspect that De Bruyne will be absolutely critical to that.

Erling Haaland will get the headlines for his five-goal haul, but De Bruyne's return to form might prove more important to City's season...

And he now has 39 goals in all competitions this season, breaking a City record that has stood for nearly 100 years. So no wonder he looked back to his best against Leipzig — they were braver than most teams and City embraced the chaos. We have known each other for a long time and what he has done for me is everything.” [World Cup](https://theathletic.com/football/world-cup/), maybe he is just having an ‘off’ season — which is entirely normal. Maybe he did not suit the Red Bull style, either. But De Bruyne, with more assists than anybody in the league since Guardiola took over, has never done too badly out of it. For all the talk of how to find Haaland better, one obvious fix is simply for De Bruyne to get 10 per cent better. He was asked about his own claim at the weekend that he is ‘an old man’, whether he could see himself dropping into a deeper midfield role as his career winds down and whether he will end that career at the top level or play on for years in a lesser league. It is easy to say this in hindsight but did anybody seriously think that De Bruyne, at a time when City are trying to work out how best to pick out Erling Haaland, would not have much more to offer? Although ironically given the recent talking points around City’s difficulty in picking out the right passes, the Norwegian was not really ‘assisted’ for any of his five goals. Haaland showed exactly what he can offer when the ball reaches him. After he sat down in front of the media on Monday he must have gone and checked his birth certificate.

De Bruyne has the most assists in the Premier League this season, but that still hasn't satisfied his manager.

While it was Erling Haaland who scored five in the rout of RB Leipzig, the brilliant Belgian was back to his best in a display of high risk, high reward.

He is the manager who prizes control and the De Bruyne is the player who is likeliest to cede possession in a bid to do something special. He got all three in the side against Leipzig, with Silva on the right wing, De Bruyne displaying his passing range and crossing ability as an inside-right and the player closest to Haaland. He has the blend of urgency and extreme talent that enables him to envision the exceptional and believe he can execute it. “When Kevin is right, left, moving here, close to central defenders to set the ball, in the box arrive, make the transitions, Kevin is ‘hats off’,” he said. Indeed, in the entire City squad, De Bruyne has the second lowest completion rate for short passes all season; perhaps he just isn’t good at the simple things. And the manager sometimes prefers Bernardo Silva, a master in the pockets in the close confines when games are cramped, and Ilkay Gundogan, who he described as City’s best midfielder this season. “When he plays with that rhythm, he is able to score goals and make more assists. In that times, Kevin is unstoppable and hopefully he can realise for the future.” “We are so good when Kevin can get the ball in front of him towards the goal,” said Haaland. If De Bruyne has concentrated more on supplying Haaland, the woodwork denied him an assist for the second goal. On a night [when the Norwegian delivered the statistics](/sport/football/erling-haaland-man-city-goals-scored-b2301063.html), the Belgian produced the spectacular. It ended with him, with a blend of power and curl, dispatching a shot from 20 yards into the top corner of their goal.