Three Things We Learnt From Watching Manchester City Win Again

At the weekend Manchester City returned to winning ways again as they beat Crystal Palace 3:1 away from home in the Premier League. We look at three things we noticed after watching the victory again.

KDB is probably back

It has been a strange season for Manchester City because we sit here in mid April with the title in our hands and still in both the FA Cup and Champions League, which is an something we have never achieved before as a club. The peculiar thing is we have achieved all of this without what many would consider to be our very best player – the inimitable Kevin De Bruyne.

It is not that he has been completely absent. He has been around and about with the squad for a lot of the year, but a succession of knee injuries and some stop start recoveries have robbed us of seeing him play with any frequency or importantly any fluency.

Somewhat surprisingly De Bruyne has actually played in 28 games so far this season, during which he has scored 5 goals and gained 7 assists. Those statistics are not bad for any normal player in the Premier League. However, De Bruyne is not a normal player and these stats stand in pale comparison to last years where he played 52 games, scored 12 goals and assisted a further 21.

The excitement we had on Sunday against Palace was we saw more of last season’s De Bruyne than this years. To have such an important player back on song in the run in will be like making a sudden £200 million signing.

I have a feeling he will be decisive in the matches against Spurs because as we know, it is big players who tend to step up and win big games!