A day after signing Erling Haaland, Kevin de Bruyne sent a wake-up call with four goals against Wolverhampton Wanderers (1-5) that left the Premier League four points away for Pep Guardiola’s men.
It will be enough for Manchester City to win one of the two remaining games and draw another to become champions of the Premier League for the eighth time, the fourth since Guardiola arrived.
A ‘hat trick’ by De Bruyne in 20 minutes sentenced one of the last three finals that remained for City to add another title. Three goals that made it clear that he is still the most important footballer on this team. He opened the can with a wall to Bernardo Silva and a low left-footed finish, followed up by taking advantage of a poor clearance from the Wolves keeper and sealed his hat-trick with a hard shot from the edge of the box.
Three goals with his left foot that made it 1-1 useless for Wolves, who dreamed of giving war when between Raúl Jiménez and Pedro Neto they created a lethal counter that culminated Leo Dendoncker, but who never came close to discussing the cityzen dominance.
At 1-3, City slowed down in the second half and temporized the match until De Bruyne’s boots forged the fourth. The Belgian filtered the ball to Phil Foden inside the area, he tried to combine with Sterling in front of goal, but a defender cleared the ball that was left dead to De Bruyne to sign the goal poker.
The party wasn’t over and five minutes from time, Jack Grealish, Joao Cancelo and Raheem Sterling combined to see the Englishman push the ball across the goal line and City have scored five goals in three of their last four league games.
The victory causes City to take three points from Liverpool, who beat Aston Villa on Tuesday. However, the Celestes raise the advantage in the scoring difference -the tie-breaking criterion in the event of equal points- to +7, so if they win their next match against West Ham United they could be virtually champions. With a draw against the ‘Hammers’, it would be worth them to beat Aston Villa at home on the last day to retain the Premier League title.
