Manchester City spent just 15 minutes finessing their tactical plan that destroyed neighbours Manchester United in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final, Kevin De Bruyne has revealed.
Pep Guardiola’s side took a grip of the last-four clash with a 3-1 victory at Old Trafford ahead of the second leg in three weeks’ time.
City could have had an even bigger advantage after a thoroughly dominant first half when they tore apart an Ole Gunnar Solskjaer side that could not cope with their movement and slick passing.
Guardiola surprisingly started without a striker, leaving Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus on the bench and used De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva as false nines, flitting between attack and midfield.
While City have played that system on rare occasions in the past, Belgium international De Bruyne said they only found out that they would be using the strategy on the morning of the game.
“We did 15 minutes this morning - that's about it,” De Bruyne said. “[On Monday] we didn't train that, then [yesterday] morning we did.
“But it's not like we never did it before so we did it already sometimes against teams who prefer to play man against man - Cardiff, United and I think Barcelona the way we did it the first year. So we've done it a couple of times.”
It was a brutal response to City’s surprise defeat to United at the Etihad Stadium a month ago when they were caught out by the speed of Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial on the counterattack.
Rashford did at least pull a goal back in the second half to give United some hope and De Bruyne warned that City cannot assume that the tie is over.
“I think we know what their strong points were and then you try to keep the mistakes to a minimum,” he added.
“On the counter, they're very dangerous. I think they're more dangerous when they play in that way than when they have the ball.
“I think that we pressed them really well and we kept the ball good and we created lots of chances in the first half, the second half maybe a few but we did well.
“It's not done because obviously I don't think the rule of away goals is there so obviously they only need to get two so it's possible. But I prefer to start with a 3-1 advantage than another scoreline obviously.”