The midfielder’s creative brilliance was on full display in his first league match in five months, bringing spontaneity to Pep Guardiola’s mechanical side
With 16 minutes to go at St James’ Park on Saturday, Liverpool were perhaps beginning to contemplate their five-point lead over Manchester City, having played a game more, becoming an actual five-point lead without caveats – which, with City still to go to Anfield – might have started to look fairly significant. But then Kevin De Bruyne scored one and set up another, the lead is down to two points and the champions are within striking range.
City are still nowhere near their best, vulnerable to balls played in behind their defensive line in the way that Pep Guardiola sides struggling for form often are. That they conceded two in three minutes against Newcastle was also characteristic; leaking goals in batches is another familiar quirk of Guardiola teams when they’re still searching for the right set-up out of possession. At half-time, Saturday’s match was almost a paradigmatic example of how Guardiola teams can lose games: City had controlled the ball to an extraordinary degree without creating a huge amount and yet had not only let in two goals to brilliant finishes but had conceded three or four other chances in transition. Newcastle had been under some pressure but essentially the game had been following a similar pattern when De Bruyne came on.
