‘He is coming back,’ Pep Guardiola reassured the fans after a first Premier League loss of the season, giving the news of Kevin De Bruyne’s imminent return an almost-Messianic feel going into the run up to Christmas. Not that Saturday’s loss to Chelsea should be read as the inevitable result of an injury to a key player. ‘What happened when [Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Aguero] were not here?’ asked the Manchester City manager after the match. ‘We won every game. Of course, I would like to be with Sergio, with Kevin, but the guys did an incredible performance today.’ But the announcement that City’s Belgian midfielder will be returning to training in around a week’s time raises questions about how Guardiola will set up his team with a full complement of midfielders now available to him. In many respects, the loss of De Bruyne this season was offset by the fact that Bernardo Silva had been brought into the club as an eventual replacement for his namesake David. With Riyad Mahrez coming into the squad over the summer, Bernardo Silva was easily redeployed into the midfield three, neatly solving the problem caused by De Bruyne’s ACL injury. How good, though, has the diminutive Portuguese midfielder been? Has he earned a starting place ahead of the Belgian?

The Case for the Defence

Having picked up his original injury in the opening game of the season against Arsenal, Kevin De Bruyne has only played 236 minutes this season in all competitions, making a further two substitute appearances and two starts before suffering another knee injury. Only 81 of these 236 minutes came in the Premier League and so comparing Manchester City in the league this season to last season should give something of an indication of how De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva compare in the central midfield areas. With De Bruyne getting injured midway through August, one of the most notable areas that has seen the impact for Manchester City has been their pressing game. The graphic below, which appeared in an article on Football Whispers, shows that Fernandinho’s defensive actions per 90 minutes have gone up over the period which correlates neatly with De Bruyne’s absence. (The last two game in August came against Huddersfield and Wolves). On top of this, the likelihood of their opposition reaching the final third increased from 36.0%to 41.4% in the same period while the number of opposition possession sequences which involved 5 passes or more went up from 17.0 to 26.75 per game. This would suggest that City’s press is less effective with Bernardo Silva and David Silva in the midfield areas than when Kevin De Bruyne was playing there. With De Bruyne back in the team, you might expect them to be a little tighter defensively.