Julian Alvarez had nodded Pep Guardiola‘s men ahead after 16 minutes, before a moment of brilliance doubled our lead.
De Bruyne stood over the ball for a free-kick inside the Burnley half and caught the visitors off guard, quickly playing a superbly weighted ball behind the backline into the path of Alvarez, who slotted into the corner.
Rodrigo swept in a third after the interval with Ameen Al-Dakhil scoring late on for Vincent Kompany’s team.
“Yesterday, we worked a bit on it,” revealed De Bruyne when quizzed about our second goal of the evening.
“At the beginning I didn’t really want to do it. But the defender with Julian moved towards him a bit. So he opened the space for Julian to go into.
“I just had to put it straight with the right speed and Julian did the rest. We practised it for Burnley, but it can work against other teams.
“I think, like you see Pep was lively with his staff, because if you pull it off they’re happy. They give you the options, front post, second post, trick plays, and a little bit of it is seeing what is possible. When you pull it off, it’s a nice goal.”
The midfielder made his first start since the reverse fixture against the Clarets in the first league match of the season at Turf Moor, where he was forced off injured.
The Belgian believes he is making gradual progress to full fitness and is looking ahead to a fierce title challenge for the remaining months of the season, with City currently in second place, five points behind leaders Liverpool with a game in hand.
“It feels great obviously. The last time I started was against Burnley at the start of the season about six months ago. Now I’m feeling good. Progressing now and I’m happy. I’m going in the right direction,” De Bruyne added.
“It’s more of a feeling if we lose a game, we’re getting too far behind, like we have to win. If we lose today, Liverpool would win and then they’re far away. We just keep plugging away trying to win and hopefully we come a little closer to them and we can fight to the end again.
“There’s always competitors. Mostly it has been Liverpool since I’ve been here, Arsenal were there last year. There’s more teams there, maybe it’s a bigger fight with more teams.
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“We’re competitors and we want to win the best teams. Hopefully by the end of the season we can be back on top.
“I think everyone is happy. I think for the first time this season we’ve had a full squad, apart from Akanji. That’s not happened for us. Everybody gets injuries.
“If everyone gets back we will be really competitive and it can only help us.”
