De Bruyne is now OFFICIALLY a Man City Player

If you scroll down on my blog, you would see an article that I probably should not have written. There I was, praising De Bruyne for seeing sense and deciding to stay with Wolfsburg. Applauding him for seeing the sense in helping a very good team challenge Bayern for the title as well as try and make a little rawkus in the Champions League.


There was the fool in me forgetting what time it is....2015, the age of the modern footballer.



For Manchester City, this is just them saying that they are not playing around, and they WANT their title back. With Chelsea struggling and Wenger still getting Arsenal playing the same exact way, City have taken an early lead. But they don't want to let that slip and want to be even stronger.

You look at the big money on Sterling and now on De Bruyne, both attacking wingers and both the best players on the teams they were bought from. City's owner want to dominate and Pellegrini really can't have any excuses because he has obviously been given Carte Blanche to get who he needs to at LEAST retain the title and go deeper in the Champions League.

So the obvious question is how much better will De Bruyne make City?

I watched a few of Wolfsburg's games last season and this year, and noticed that what De Bruyne needs is space. He isn't a winger that can work in tight situations like Robben or Neymar. But he is deadly in a counter-attack because he understands what runs to make and times them perfectly, and he usually makes the right pass that ends up in a goal. That is why he was the top assist man in the Bundesliga last season, because of his awareness of his teammates and ability to give them the right pass. Going to City, he will have even greater quality around him and even Dost and Marshall Mathers (I think) will admit that Kevin's passes will now be delivered to a striker that is three levels above them, and is probably the deadliest in the world.








These are all best case scenarios that I am working out. That De Bruyne is given space, he can always find his crossing range and either Aguero, Bony or Yaya can be on the end of his crosses and turn them in. But just as Star Wars has taught us, for every light there is a dark side. The reason why I didn't want De Bruyne to move is because he is not an amazing player. An amazing player can play in any system, anywhere and be amazing. People have wondered why Messi is not the same when he plays for Argentina and questions how good he would be in another league. But if we take away what Messi does for Bacelona, he is still pretty damn good for Argentina, it's just that in comparison to the wizardy he conducts at Barcelona he seems ordinary when for his country. It's not the same kind of situation for Neymar, Robben and Tevez. These are amazing players that will do what they do no matter what system they are put in. The same cannot be said for De Bruyne.


At Wolfsburg, that was his team. Hecking built the team around him. He recognized this was their best player and so he constructed a counter attacking passing game that made sure De Bruyne could always receive the ball out wide. Those that ran into the box, tweaked their runs to match the kind of crosses that De Bruyne would give because they knew the ball would more times than not be fed into him. At City, that won't be the case. Pellegrini is not building the team around him, because Yaya is the heart of that team, along with Silva and Aguero. Those three are what City are about and everyone else has to just fit into that framework. Whether De Bruyne will be just as effective by simply being a PART of a system really remains to be seen.


De Bruyne has come out and spoken of his love for the Premier League and how it's the best in the world. Him saying this may be an attempt to deflect any notion that he simply moved purely because of the money. Honestly, I don't think this was a money move by De Bruyne...entirely. Look, everyone is human and if you see a cheque with a lot of zeroes, it takes an almighty human being from krypton to reject it. But I do think he just wanted to prove himself. This may have to do with the abuse that Mourinho hurled at him. De Bruyne might have a personal vendetta to prove to Mourinho that it was a bad decision to let him go. If he can go and lead them to the title and even be the key player that takes them further than Chelsea in the Champions League, then it would bring a huge sense of satisfaction to my Belgian amigo.

As for Wolfsburg, life moves on. They have won two and drawn one of their games, and Kruse looks to be very sharp. With the money they have received from De Bruyne, Hecking is not waiting around and has already secured Dante and Draxler (overrated?) may follow as well. I'm not sure how well they will cope because De Bruyne was so important to them and was the crucial part of making them German cup champions and finishing behind Bayern. But Hecking is a really good coach and I'm sure he saw this coming and was already making contingency plans in case it did occur. I just wish we lived in a world where the "smaller" teams could keep their best players, which would lead to better matches and more competition.


I now know what time it is....2015, the age of the modern footballer.




HH