De Bruyne excels as well-owned FPL assets miss out on City’s latest win

Manchester City coasted to their eighth straight Premier League victory on Wednesday night but they did it without the services of four of their five most-owned Fantasy Premier League midfielders and forwards.

Sergio Aguero (£11.9m) missed out on the 2-0 win over Cardiff with a muscle injury, while Raheem Sterling (£11.6m), Bernardo Silva (£7.6m) and David Silva (£8.5m) remained unused substitutes as the league leaders cantered to another three points on home soil.

We recap the events of a frustrating night at the Etihad for some Fantasy managers.

Manchester City 2-0 Cardiff City

• Goals: Kevin De Bruyne (£9.7m), Leroy Sane (£9.3m)
• Assists: Aymeric Laporte (£6.0m), Gabriel Jesus (£9.9m)

Pep Guardiola hailed his squad depth after making wholesale changes for the visit of Cardiff on Wednesday – and pouring cold water on many FPL bosses’ hopes of a monster haul from their City assets in the process.

There were seven alterations to the side that defeated Fulham on Saturday, with only Ederson (£5.6m), Aymeric Laporte (£6.0m), Oleksandr Zinchenko (£4.7m) and Kevin De Bruyne (£9.7m) retaining their starts.

Speaking at full-time, Guardiola said of his fringe players:

We cannot forget these players, they help us a lot to get where we are right now. They are not the guys who played their last game two months ago.

We have a deep squad; without that, we cannot fight for four competitions. It’s impossible. Being right now in April it’s because we have a lot of confidence with the players but of course we to come back the injured players and move forward.

We’ll never know if Aguero would have been also handed a breather had he been fit but in the end, De Bruyne was the only City midfielder or forward (Zinchenko aside) who started both of his side’s Gameweek 32 fixtures.

This latest round of widespread rotation may deter some Fantasy managers from lumping on City assets in Gameweek 35 but a double-header against Spurs and Manchester United presents an altogether different challenge to two matches against sides in the bottom three.

It would be difficult, for instance, to imagine Phil Foden (£4.5m) being thrown into the deep end against those Champions League-chasing clubs as he was in Wednesday’s home fixture against the Bluebirds.

The England under-21 international may not even start another Premier League match this season but gave a good account of himself on Wednesday, registering the joint-highest number of attempts on goal and setting up a big chance for Laporte.

Foden hit the post from close range and wasted a one-on-one opportunity with the busy Neil Etheridge (£4.7m) but earned the praise of his manager after the match.

Guardiola said:

Phil Foden played excellent. He did everything, arriving in the right positions with the right tempo. He always has chances, has a sense of goal. He’s ready, we know it, to play any game in any position. He’s part of the group.

Every game he plays so far is good levels. The reception and the vision, he is an exceptional player. It’s not easy for him but he’s patient and we delighted he’s here, next season he will play even more minutes than he did this season.

De Bruyne was a class above anyone else on show, however.

The Belgian midfielder has had a stop-start season through injury and even when fit, hasn’t quite hit the heights of previous campaigns with his performances.

This was one of De Bruyne’s best displays of the season, however, and the first time he has hit double figures in FPL in 2018/19.

His fluke of a goal was barely sufficient reward for a superb night’s work, which saw him create three excellent opportunities that Gabriel Jesus (£9.9m) ought to have done better with.

De Bruyne grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck right from the off, driving at the Cardiff backline and sending over some excellent deliveries both from open play and dead-ball situations.

Fernandinho nodded one De Bruyne free-kick narrowly wide, while Sean Morrison (£4.7m) was inches from turning the ball past his own goalkeeper from a low ball fizzed in by the Belgian.

Guardiola said of the former Chelsea and Wolfsburg midfielder:

Kevin, we miss him. The results maybe don’t say that but we miss him, he’s an important player for us.

Today, especially in the first half, in the first ten, 15, 20 minutes, made incredible movements.

The player himself added:

I won’t compare myself to last year. My season has been very long. I had to work so hard three, four times to come back. I won’t have the level of last year but it’s not about me, it’s about winning titles.

It’s one game at a time. For me, it’s been hard because my focus has been to come back in the right shape to help the team.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, of course, and this was a home fixture against a very limited and possibly Championship-bound Cardiff side.

Still, De Bruyne is very much in the differential bracket for those Fantasy managers chasing a mini-league deficit and it will be interesting to monitor his performances in the FA Cup and UEFA Champions League (if selected) over the coming week to see if this dominant display against the Bluebirds can kick-start some appealing form going into Double Gameweek 35.

The positive news for owners of Sterling, Aguero and Bernardo was that their understudies didn’t really deliver anything other than “seven out of ten” performances and lacked a real clinical edge in attack.

Jesus, in particular, was guilty of spurning four chances that Aguero may have gobbled up, while Riyad Mahrez (£8.2m) and Leroy Sane (£9.2m) provided plenty of menace but tended to chance their arm with speculative efforts from distance that Etheridge mostly dealt with.

Jesus does however deserve credit for showing the awareness to chest a Mahrez cross into the path of Sane, who lashed home a shot from just inside the Cardiff box to double City’s lead.

Laporte recorded another Double Gameweek double-digit haul with consecutive clean sheets and an assist for De Bruyne’s opener at the Etihad but could have had further attacking returns, nodding one header wide from a corner-kick situation and then drawing a brilliant point-blank save from Etheridge from a teasing Foden cross.

No City player is truly safe from the threat of rotation in the season run-in but, for those looking ahead to Gameweek 35, Laporte is the only City outfielder who has started both fixtures in each of the reigning champions’ Double Gameweeks this season.

Guardiola’s problems at left-back worsened on Wednesday, with Fabian Delph (£5.3m), who has admittedly been peripheral in 2019, already sidelined.

Zinchenko limped from the field after just 19 minutes and the City boss provided an update on the Ukrainian full-back after full-time:

It doesn’t look good. Right now I do not know but it is doesn’t look good for the next games.

He is an important player for us. He knows the mechanisms, he knows the way we want to play but it is what it is.

Asked if Benjamin Mendy (£6.1m) could return to the first-team picture, Guardiola said:

We’ll see tomorrow how he feels, how he trains. We don’t have many options.

Accept it, we are going to find a solution. I don’t know right know which one.

Danilo fought a lot to play in that position, but it is not his natural one. We will see.

Ederson only had one tame Oumar Niasse (£5.0m) strike to deal with but had to be alert late on when tackling the on-loan Everton striker as he raced through on goal.

Having half-jokingly threatened to play his under-23s, Neil Warnock ended up making only one change to his starting XI from the side that came close to beating Chelsea on Sunday: Joe Ralls (£4.6m) replacing Harry Arter (£4.9m) in central midfield.

Warnock confirmed that Arter was rested due to being only one caution away from a two-match ban – a threat that is now lifted due to the 32-game threshold having passed.

The Cardiff boss said:

Harry’s on nine bookings and we need Harry at Burnley, really. I think he’s been superb the last few weeks and he definitely would have been booked tonight! He can’t get banned now, so we’re alright.

Warnock also confirmed that Aron Gunnarsson (£4.4m) and Josh Murphy (£4.8m) hadn’t picked up fresh injuries when being substituted.

The Bluebirds’ manager said:

I told Gunnars he could come off at 2-0 but then I didn’t need him to, I daren’t have him off really because we needed his old head there. He was just starting to struggle a bit but he’ll be alright.

Same with Murphy, we thought he wouldn’t play as well but he wanted to play.

This wasn’t much of an audition for the likes of Murphy and Victor Camarasa (£4.5m) ahead of Cardiff’s Double Gameweek 34, with the Bluebirds managing just four shots in the entire 90 minutes and seeing only 21.7% of the ball.

Etheridge at least racked up three save points for his owners and is now the best-value player in FPL this season, based on points per million spent.

Manchester City XI (4-3-3): Ederson; Danilo, Stones, Laporte, Zinchenko (Walker 19′); De Bruyne, Foden; Mahrez, Jesus, Sane.

Cardiff City XI (4-2-3-1): Etheridge; Peltier, Morrison, Manga, Bennett; Gunnarsson (Bacuna 81′), Ralls; Hoilett, Camarasa (Decordova-Reid 83′), Murphy (Mendez-Laing 60′); Niasse.