Manchester City v Fulham - Carabao Cup Fourth Round
#1 Kevin De Bruyne (Belgium, Manchester City)
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Crystal Palace v Manchester City - Premier League
The Belgian was the player of the season last year, even though he lost out on the trophy to Mohamed Salah. De Bruyne was brilliant for a City side that powered to 100 points in the league and won the Premier League Champions with a 19 point gap at the top of the table.
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Over the summer, De Bruyne powered Belgium to the semi-finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, where his country finished third. He was the heartbeat of both teams, the engine made of gold, and his vision, efficiency and brilliance made him one of the best midfielders in the world.
As such, even greater things were expected of him this season, however, De Bruyne's dreams were broken in the very first match of the season against Arsenal, when he tore his knee ligament, an injury that ruled him out for 63 days.
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He missed 10 games for City, before making a brief return in the middle of October. He played just 120 minutes over 3 matches, before a ligament injury sidelined him again, this time for another 43 days, where he missed a further 11 games.
He finally made his return in the middle of December now, before another knock ruled him out for 5 days, making him miss the game against Southampton. He returned to lead his team out against Rotherham, in the FA Cup last weekend, where he played for 67 minutes.
While City had initially coped well, the absence of their talisman had taken its toll as they stuttered in December. They are still second in the league, 4 points behind Liverpool and will be counting on their best player to rally them to a successful title defense.
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Deepungsu Pandit
Deepungsu is a veteran football journalist who has been covering daily transfer roundups and news for over six years at Sportskeeda. He has written over 8500 articles for the website, and has garnered over 19.5Million reads.
Deepungsu holds a PG degree in Microbiology and an MBA degree in Total Quality Management. He has an extensive two-decade long writing experience, which includes a decade of sports blogging. His writing prowess has even led his work getting cited on the legendary Franz Beckenbauer's Wikipedia page.
Inspired by Diego Maradona, Deepungsu played as an attacking midfielder for his local club at subdivision level in his initial years and scored an important goal or two. However, his all-time favorite footballer is Lionel Messi, and evidently, he feels Argentina's glory in 2022 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment for fulfilling his long-standing dream. He is also an ardent East Bengal fan.
Deepungsu has been a Manchester United supporter since the year 2000. Unsurprisingly, his favorite manager is Sir Alex Ferguson and the Scotsman helped him get through some of the toughest days of his life. Like the fiery Scot, Deepungsu also leaves no stone unturned when it comes to accuracy in articles and only relies on credible sources.
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