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Kevin de Bruyne scores in Newcastle 2-3 Man City

Newcastle 2-3 Man City: Perfect stage for De Bruyne’s return

By Andy PymontPosted on Posted in Manchester City, Newcastle United, Premier League

A wonderful game of football on Saturday night finished Newcastle 2-3 Man City. The reigning champions came from behind in the closing stages to seal an important and timely victory. The game saw Kevin de Bruyne return from an injury that has kept him out for most of the campaign.

Man City 2-3 Newcastle: Story of the Game

Even without de Bruyne, City got off to a good start at St James Park. Bernardo Silva scored a great opener. Martin Dubravka had to make a handful of good saves to keep it at 1-0. It looked like City were gearing up for a comfortable win.

Then, suddenly, Newcastle burst into life. Twice in the space of five minutes they overloaded their inside left, with both Aleksander Isak and Anthony Gordon racing into a space with no recognised and comfortable full-back. First Isak and then Gordon cut inside and curled a superb finish beyond Stefan Ortega. The ground came to life.

Man City continued to dominate the ball, and were creating chances, with Dubravka continuing to produce some great saves. However, the game seemed finely-poised and with a chance of time running out for the champions. All that changed with the introduction of de Bruyne from the bench.

First the Belgian scored with a wonderfully composed finish. Then, in injury time, he produced a brilliantly creative assist to fellow substitute Oscar Bobb, who astutely evaded a tackle and the goalkeeper and scored a memorable winner.

De Bruyne the Star

De Bruyne’s turn as a substitute, with a great goal and an even greater assist, rightly attracted plenty of attention in post-match coverage. It was a memorable contribution.

Wonderful Game

de Bruyne was just one of 26 players to feature in the game, and whilst he was the star, plenty of others contributed to a real feast of football.

It’s certainly hard to remember as many great goals being scored in a game as this one – all five were great to watch and contributed to a real sense of occasion.

The result was also constantly in doubt – whilst Man City certainly had more of the ball and made more chances, the quickfire double from Newcastle created a sense of tension and the game was tied at 2-2 going into injury time before de Bruyne and Bobb combined to win it for the visitors.

On a macro level, the Premier League is very exciting this season with so many teams competing for the European places. However, a lot of individual games haven’t been quite so enthralling – so it was great to watch this one which really showed the league at its very best.

Ally McCoist, speaking on TNT Sports, described the game as one of the best he’d seen in years:

What next for Man City?

This result came at the perfect time for Man City. It takes them to within two points of current leaders Liverpool at the top of the Premier League. The two teams will play again this season, of course. I expect the title race to be between these two – exactly as I said back in December.

A two-week break follows this fixture for City before they are back in action – giving more time for Erling Håland to work on his fitness. If he and de Bruyne are available for most of the rest of the season, I fancy them to have a trademark second-half charge to the title.

If City can win the title, it will add to their fabulous recent history. They won a memorable Treble last season, whilst winning the league this year would see them become the first team in the entire history of English football to win 4 league titles in a row.

What next for Newcastle?

Defeat in this game means Newcastle have lost 8 of their last 10 league games – a really alarming record.

However, this does need putting into context. Whilst a lot of pundits had predicted in pre-season that Newcastle would struggle to do as well in the league with the added demands of European fixtures on what is still a work-in-progress squad, their injury list has been the stuff of nightmares and has certainly made a congested December very difficult to navigate.

Half of all the goals that Newcastle have conceded this season have come after the 70th minute of games and it’s not hard to see that this correlates with the injury situation. Like Man City, Newcastle have a two-week break now and will hope this proves crucial to getting some bodies back.

Interestingly, injuries aren’t the only area where Newcastle are suffering with bad luck this season – their expected points per game is 35 whereas they’ve collected only 29 actual points:

In some quarters there has been talk of Eddie Howe being under pressure but I feel that has to be premature. Before this season he had been constantly overachieving since taking the job, and there are lots of mitigating circumstances this year. Newcastle should stick with him and there should be better times to come.

Headlines about the recently-published club accounts focused on Newcastle making a large loss last season. However, there are some better stories in the underlying data. There has been a large growth in revenue and a reduction of the wage-to-turnover ratio. Ultimately this is a similar story to that on the pitch for Newcastle this season. Overall results aren’t where people might have hoped, but looking beyond the immediately obvious, there are signs that the club is continuing to progress its long-term project.

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