KEVIN De Bruyne did not have the best game at St James’ Park on Tuesday. Booked for taking a free-kick too quickly – an absurd situation, although it is the law – he should have collected a second booking for a foul on Ayoze Perez after 64 minutes and been sent off.
Recognising the midfielder had got away with one, Pep Guardiola immediately took De Bruyne off. He was probably thinking of withdrawing the Belgian anyway. De Bruyne has completed only one match since the World Cup – the 3-0 win over Huddersfield a week gone Sunday.
When he starts, he tends to last between 60 and 75 minutes. That, of course is the result of injury and when City have a squad as deep as they do, there is no point putting undue pressure on De Bruyne as he makes his way back from surgery on his knee.
Only Kevin De Bruyne gets a yellow card for an assist..
— City Chief ️ (@City_Chief) January 29, 2019
There are still four months of the season to be played. If this careful management of De Bruyne allows him to play a more central role in the run-in, then Guardiola’s careful management will be vindicated.
Even if the league looks a distant (but not impossible) prospect after defeat at Newcastle, there is still the Champions League plus two domestic cups to be played for – and there was a sense in the summer that if City’s target this season had to be Europe, that the Champions League is the last box remaining to be ticked before they can fully be accepted as a member of the elite.
But what happened at Newcastle was bizarre. It was almost as though taking the lead in the first minute disrupted City, that it confirmed an underlying sense that winning away at a Newcastle side with the second-worst home record in the division would be straightforward.
There was a lack of pace and precision to their play; Guardiola’s frustration was obvious very early.
Guardiola: “We could not deal with Newcastle’s holding midfielders.”
Newcastle’s holding midfield (Hayden & Longstaff) combined fee: £1.5m
Manchester City’s central midfield (Silva, Fernandinho and De Bruyne) combined fee: £115m pic.twitter.com/U2D4ZumIL7
— Tommy Longworth (@Tommy_Longworth) January 29, 2019
City had won their previous eight games. In the previous six, they’d scored 28 without reply. But as has been evident before this season, this is not a side that deals well with pressure. It lacks leadership on the pitch – perhaps as a direct result of Guardiola’s style of management that demands his players essentially become cogs in a mechanism guided from the touchline.
There was nobody there to calm nerves and control the game. Newcastle may only have had two shots on target but once Salomon Rondon had got the first, there was almost an expectation that they would find a second. As in the defeats to Crystal Palace and Leicester, there as a sense of a team going through the moments, presenting a simulacrum of dominance but lacking the edge that might have made that decisive.
De Bruyne is a player who can offer that. He is not a leader in the classic mould of Roy Keane or Patrick Vieira, but he does have the capacity to make things happen. There are many reasons why City have not been as good this season as they were last – they’ve now dropped 16 points this campaign, as against 14 in the whole of 2017-18 – but De Bruyne’s injury, his absence and his struggle for top form since, is a significant one.
In February last year, Guardiola, who had previously described De Bruyne as the best player he had ever managed with the exception of Lionel Messi, suggested the Belgian was ready to challenge for the Ballon d’Or. “He is not playing like this in just one game,” Guardiola said. “It’s the whole season – every three days – playing that way. The way he’s played it’s difficult to find anyone [like him] in Europe.”
| Pep Guardiola on Kevin De Bruyne:
"It’s not easy when players have long injuries. Thats why we tried to handle Kevin’s minutes and of course today, we need him because he's so clever and so aggressive in his game. He helps a lot." pic.twitter.com/DGaO0Rec7v
— Superbia Proelia (@SuperbiaProeIia) January 26, 2019
But De Bruyne this season has been peripheral. In part that’s been down to Bernardo Silva, whose form has meant there’s been no need to rush De Bruyne back. But last season, De Bruyne contributed eight goals and 16 assists; this season he’s managed one goal and no assists. Any side will feel the pinch when that level of creativity is lost. Key passes per 90 minutes, meanwhile, are down from 3.1 to 2.6.
Analysis is difficult because of City’s habit of winning games by vast margins. This is a subtlety the emergence of the superclubs is forcing football to deal with: the capacity to hammer sides once you’re on top is not the same as the capacity to break down stubborn opponents.
There is still time for De Bruyne to redeem this season. Given he’s only managed one full game and is still feeling his way back from injury, it would be absurd to blame him or be critical. But what the defeats to Newcastle, Leicester and Palace have shown, is that even a club with City’s resources miss a De Bruyne at his peak.
