Manchester City vs Sevilla match report: Kevin De Bruyne's late show saves City who fight back from a goal down to win

Manchester City 2 Sevilla 1

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It is not the way Manuel Pellegrini would choose to generate some Champions League electricity but the look of relief on his face last night suggested he was gratefully accepting it.

Just when the arithmetic of the match – a team which spent £153m this summer up against a team which spent £14.7m – seemed destined to make Manchester City look a lot worse than average in Europe once again, the man for whom they paid £54m arrived to show that money generally talks.

Kevin De Bruyne’s powerful and immaculately precise 91st-minute shot, barely spinning as it skidded inside the post and reached the net, was not the only measure of City’s investment in him, it has to be said. The work-rate was written across a beetroot red face. He was their sharpest weapon all night, adding once again to the sense that Jose Mourinho was premature in his judgement that the Belgian lacked mental strength.

Time will tell. For now, the ruffle of the hair from Pellegrini was the signal of immense relief because the preceding 90 minutes had added up to another infernally long night.

“These are the nights we live for,” De Bruyne has been promising in the advertisements towering over Manchester commuters on the ring road and main southern artery for the past two weeks. That much certainly speaks for City’s owners, who could hardly be doing more to create the infrastructure of what they view as a super-club and want a giant European footprint to match. Tomorrow, the Chinese president visits.


 Yevhen Konoplyanka celebrates after giving Sevilla the lead
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It’s an insubstantial pageant compared with what Champions League success would mean. There is something in the substance of these occasions – the quiet shuffle of the crowd from the club’s modern tram stop at 7pm last night; the muffled boos for the Uefa anthem – which makes these seem anything but the nights of their lives.

The requirement is for a manager who will give words and life to these continental occasions in his pre-match press conferences. The delivery by Pellegrini on Monday was, frankly, an insult to those who had taken the time to turn up and hear.

Pellegrini was appointed as an antidote to the autocrat that Roberto Mancini became but somewhere amid the collegiate spirit we hear he possesses, City need someone to let them know that there will be hell to pay if they don’t defend with their lives. Because after City’s array of attacking strength had delivered an early burst of electricity – Jesus Navas a yard away from the target with the first shot in anger from 25 yards – the old European traumas were back.

All the usual Joe Hart choreography came with them – screaming at his defenders and pointing at his head to tell them to use theirs – but basic errors and sloppiness allowed Sevilla to enter the game with confidence.


 Wilfried Bony celebrates but it was an Adil Rami own goal
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Within half an hour City’s football became a form of schizophrenia. One moment, De Bruyne and Raheem Sterling were combining beautifully– their effort allowing Yaya Touré time to unfurl a 20-yard shot which was deflected by Yevhen Konoplyanka on to the roof of the net; De Bruyne had earlier miscued after Sterling released him. The next, this side provided the most pitiful attempt to quell the Spanish threat.

Take your pick of the moments of City fecklessness which would have had any Champions League coach with ambition suffering anxiety attacks. When Konoplyanka troubled Hart with a free-kick which struck his near left post on 22 minutes, fully four City players touched it before another goalbound effort forced him to save his side again. The same failings yielded the visiting side’s opener. Ever Banega, who threatened repeatedly, got the ball between Touré and De Bruyne on the City left and found Vitolo, whose cutback saw Konoplyanka score.

Pellegrini’s big gamble – dropping Vincent Kompnay to the bench – had not worked at that stage and though City did have a half-dozen chances in the first half, there was a great deal of chance about their equaliser.

Touré’s strength took him past Timothee Kolodziejczak on the byline and found Sterling. His first-time shot Sergio Rico could only send to Wilfried Bony, whose miskick was deflected in off the right leg of Adil Rami.

After the break, Benoît Trémoulinas’s cross was headed narrowly over from eight yards, with no defender offering a serious challenge. Substitute Michael Krohn-Dehli fired into the side netting, regardless of the combined efforts of Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi.


 Kevin De Bruyne leaves it late to steal a City winner
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For their own part, City laboured to rediscover the attacking threat of the first half. It was a De Bruyne shot from distance, his shot against a sea of defenders’ legs, a speculative Bony effort when Sterling was screaming for a pass. Sergio Aguero’s four-week lay-off will be interminable if Bony does not offer better than this. That he was replaced by defensive midfielder Fernando with 14 minutes left said much about Pellegrini’s lack of attacking alternatives.

But in the final reckoning, Sevilla began to tire. Pellegrini screamed and gestured when De Bruyne overhit an 87th-minute ball across the six-yard box for Sterling but there was still time for Touré to advance, with the Spanish midfield manifestly too exhausted to follow him, and find De Bruyne. He displayed the composure and presence of mind to jockey with his right foot and cut inside to deposit beyond Rico.

After the 11th hour win at Borussia Mönchengladbach, this is becoming a City speciality. The goal cannot mask the fact they will need to find more substance to journey far towards the San Siro final.