De Bruyne, who enjoyed a fine first season at the Etihad Stadium in 2015-16, feels the impact of Guardiola has given his team a lift.
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Mourinho switched to a 4-3-3 formation in the second half, meaning that Rashford was played wide on the left.
He then created City’s second goal when his shot deflected off the post into Nigeria striker Iheanacho’s path.
City’s Kevin de Bruyne was at his scintillating best and returned to haunt Mourinho, his former manager at Chelsea, by opening the scoring when he met a flicked header from Kelechi Iheanacho.
Mourinho mixed things up for the second half, throwing on Marcus Rashford, Ander Herrera and later Anthony Martial and taking a more direct approach in search of an equalizer, but City still looked more risky on the counter-attack and De Bruyne almost restored the two-goal cushion when he ran onto Leroy Sane’s pass and shot against the inside of the post.
An error from City’s debutant goalkeeper Claudio Bravo, who flapped at a deep free-kick from Wayne Rooney, allowed Zlatan Ibrahimovic to pull a goal back.
The match had been billed as a showdown between Mourinho and Guardiola, who fought a ferocious running battle during their time as coaches of Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively. I really wonder which players they will bring to Rotterdam this week. “He wants to win, I want to win”. I trust him completely. “It’s as simple as that”.
Jose Mourinho’s struggled to match the Premier League leaders as the Citizens laid down an early-season marker after four top-flight fixtures.
Mourinho said after the defeat against City that he would have picked a different team in hindsight.
“The build-up to the game was probably the biggest I’ve ever seen to what would be, in my eyes, a normal league game – obviously there have been title deciders between these two sides in previous years at the end of the season”.
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Eric Bailly- Like Blind was a bit all over the place at times but still managed to put in the odd derby day-esque challenge the fans love. Roberto Firmino scored twice while Sadio Mane and Adam Lallana also scored at Anfield, which hosted its first game of the season following the completion of work to expand the club’s main stand.
