Pep Guardiola has confirmed that Kevin de Bruyne could return from injury to feature in Manchester City’s Premier League clash with Bournemouth on Saturday.
City will make the long trip down to the south coast knowing anything less than a win could hand further initiative to Arsenal in the title race. With Arsenal taking on Leicester at 15:00, City could find themselves five points behind the current league leaders when they kick off at 17:30.
After moving top of the table with a hard-fought 3-1 win against Arsenal nine days ago, City could only manage a 1-1 draw with Nottingham Forest three days later despite dominating proceedings.
City then drew 1-1 again in midweek, sharing the spoils with RB Leipzig in Germany after again failing to make the most of spells of dominance. De Bruyne missed that game through illness, but Guardiola has said the Belgian midfielder could be back on Saturday.
Aymeric Laporte and John Stones didn’t travel to Germany either through illness and a hamstring injury respectively, but Pep was less confident about their chances.
“We have training this afternoon,” Pep said during his Friday afternoon press conference, “[but] I think Kevin [de Bruyne] is back to training. Aymeric [Laporte] I don’t think so, and John [Stones] maybe will do a partial [session].”
When pressed for a more concrete answer, Guardiola replied: “We will see – maybe Kevin, the other two, I don’t think so.”
How does this imapct Pep’s team selection?
The return of a creative player of De Bruyne’s quality is always welcome news, although the Belgian would be the first to admit that he hasn’t been playing at his usual standard in recent matches.
That said, De Bruyne’s recent rustiness certainly didn’t inhibit City’s chance creation against Forest last weekend, with a collection of glaring misses costing City the three points.
The continued absence of Laporte and Stones limits Guardiola’s options in defence, meaning he’s likely to adopt one of two systems.
Either he will start Ruben Dias and Manuel Akanji at centre-back with Nathan Ake at left-back, as was the case against Leipzig, or he will pair Dias with Ake and deploy Bernardo Silva in the hybrid left-back/midfielder role he took up against Arsenal and Forest.
