Manchester City‘s Kevin De Bruyne bagged one goal and set up another in his first start in more than two months as City trounced Nottingham Forest 3-0 on Wednesday to end their four-game losing run in the Premier League.
Bernardo Silva and Jeremy Doku also scored to help end City’s woeful seven-match winless run across all competitions, and lift Pep Guardiola’s men provisionally to fourth in the league table, while Forest fell to seventh.
De Bruyne had not started since suffering an abdominal injury on Sept. 18 and the Belgian maestro’s presence was immediately felt at the Etihad Stadium as he helped put City on the scoresheet in the eighth minute when he headed towards goal and Silva poked the ball home from close range.
De Bruyne scored himself in the 31st minute when he latched onto a pass from Doku and fired home from just inside the 18-yard box. Doku all but put the game away in the 57th minute when he met a pin-point long ball from Erling Haaland, cut inside his man and lashed it into the far corner.
Belgium star De Bruyne, who had relieved City fans singing his name all night, had come on as a substitute in the team’s five previous games, including a 2-0 loss at league leaders Liverpool on Sunday that left champions City fifth in the table.
There had been questions about a reported rift between the oft-injured De Bruyne and Guardiola, but the 33-year-old was given the captain’s armband on Wednesday, and he led the team in style.
Forest squandered a few chances, among the most glaring when Chris Wood was one on one with keeper Stefan Ortega but fired his shot wide. Wood was left to rue that opportunity to equalise as De Bruyne scored less than a minute later.
Guardiola selected Ortega as his keeper over Ederson for the second successive game, and the German made a spectacular diving save from a blistering shot from Morgan Gibbs-White early in the game.
