Kevin De Bruyne has offered an injury update that will strike fear into Premier League defences ahead of the crucial final months of the season.
Manchester City go into the winter break this week with a nine point lead in the Premier League — although Liverpool have a game in hand — having put together a 12-game winning run between November and January to take control of the title race.
In the first few months of the campaign, it looked like City would struggle to retain their title as Liverpool and Chelsea started well, but their rivals dropped off over Christmas while City kept winning.
One of the more remarkable features of that winning run was the fact that City have had to mix and match their team due to various injuries, absences and Covid cases, while players like De Bruyne have had to slowly rebuild form.
De Bruyne started the season still feeling the after-effects of two bad injuries from the Champions League final and from Euro 2020 with Belgium. He made just two substitute appearances in City's first five league games, and later missed four games out with Covid in November.
Since returning to the team at the start of December, he has four goals and three assists in 11 games, starting the last nine in a row. Before that, he registered three goals and one assist in 14 appearances. As recently as mid-December, De Bruyne admitted he was still playing through the pain, but he has now declared himself fully fit.
Explaining that his run of starts was more enforced than by choice, he told CityTV: "I’m happy I’m playing pain-free. The summer wasn’t the best for me in that aspect. But after October, I felt okay, obviously I had that period with Covid, but now it’s been really good.
"I’m playing well, the team is playing well. With some people out with Covid I had to play more minutes than I wanted to, but it’s been good.”
De Bruyne also offered a suggestion for why City were able to piece a winning run together after November, even with all the Covid and injury concerns, saying the lack of international breaks allowed the Blues to build up some rhythm.
He explained: "We are in a good run and we have a bit of a gap but we want to try and maintain that. In the years lately we've come back a bit delayed, with the Champions League and delayed season [in 2020] and this year the Euros. We were a bit behind where we need to be.
"Coming back from the November break is when you can come back with a bit of rhythm, you don't have to move all the time with international teams. It's maybe a period that suits us as a team, maybe the amount of games helps us as it evens out."
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