Manchester City’s midfield ace Kevin de Bruyne said that his side prepared tactically for just fifteen minutes ahead of their thumping derby win in the English League Cup on Tuesday, the Guardian reported.
City have a 3-1 lead at the end of the first leg at Old Trafford against rivals Manchester United. The reigning champions didn’t start with Sergio Aguero or Gabriel Jesus, but raced to a 3-0 lead after just 38 minutes in the first half. Marcus Rashford pulled one back for the home side in the second half to give the Red Devils a glimmer of hope in the second leg at Etihad.
“We did 15 minutes this morning. That’s about it,” de Bruyne said. “But it’s not like we never did it before so we did already a sometimes against teams who prefer to play man against man – Cardiff, United I think Barcelona the way we did it the first year. So we’ve done it a couple of times.”
Despite City taking the foot off the pedal following a rampant first-half display, de Bruyne was happy with his side’s display.
“Even the second half they tried to put us under a little bit more pressure and we made one mistake and they got a goal out of it but I don’t think they had a lot of chances,” he said.
Bernardo Silva opened the scoring with a stunning curler while Riyad Mahrez added the second goal. The Sky Blues tripled their lead through an Andreas Pereira own goal. They could have had more had Raheem Sterling made the most of the two chances that came his way.
“I think we should have scored more but in the end 1-3 is a good advantage. And we know it’s not over but it was a good game for us,” the Belgian star said.