Waching daily Oct 1 2017

Chelsea 0-1 Manchester City: Kevin De Bruyne brilliantly fires Pep Guardiola's

The bass line of the stereo in the Manchester City dressing room was still thumping loudly, clearly audible a good hour after the final whistle.

Fernandinho is normally in control of the playlist and the Brazilian clearly felt his team had something to celebrate.

His manager seemed to agree, Pep Guardiola embracing his coaching staff at the end with an intensity which suggested that, whilst he repeats the mantra that it is far too early to project their ultimate trajectory, he feels this team is on the right track.

And if the prize will ultimately go to those prepared to be bold and idealism really does trump pragmatism, then Pep Guardiola's Manchester City will replace Chelsea as champions.

No team in this league, not even the free-scoring Manchester United, seeks the initiative and demands the ball as they do. And it will seemingly take more than the erratic driving of an Amsterdam cabbie to thwart their plans.

No Sergio Aguero, no problem: without his Argentine centre forward Guardiola still set out to take on the reigning champions in their backyard, outpass and outplay them, and go home with the spoils.

If not always at their glittering best – especially in a first half in which they conceded possession too readily – City held true to Guardiola's idea of football.

They didn't reach perfection but they did constantly aspire towards it. And in doing, they were eventually rewarded. If this was a stress test of City's high line, Guardiola's philosophy and their all-round robustness, then they passed it with something to spare.

'We try with Manchester City to feel like a club, to convince the club were able to go wherever and play our game,' said Guardiola afterwards.

'Of course you have to adapt to your opponents but we showed in the first minute that we were coming here to win the game.

That is what I want to give to the club and that is what we did in this game.

'We played with courage, to keep the ball, to make high pressing. We play so high. John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi were amazing making the line high. We are able to do that because our high pressing is good.

Its suicide if theres no pressure on the ball. Even last season when we came here we werent able to win. Im so satisfied because we won in the way we tried from the beginning.'.

Yet it didn't always seem as though it would end that way. The narrative arc of the game was invested with suspense to suggest a potential alternative conclusion.

For much of this game it seemed the wiliness of Antonio Conte would smother the idealism of Guardiola.

No matter that he was at home, once Conte had unluckily lost his only trusted centre forward in Alvaro Morata to a first half hamstring strain injury, he was prepared to sit this one out with no recognised striker on the pitch.

Only when City did take the lead was Michy Batshuayi introduced. Conte had signalled his intent from the off, with Cesar Azpilcueta preferred over Victor Moses.

This would be no gung-ho attempt to match City's attacking prowess. With his midfield three and with Anders Christiansen a natural born leader at the back, Chelsea were happy to harry City on the counter and did so quite effectively.

Conte's reasoning was that, coming so soon after the Atletico game, Chelsea couldn't possible match the intensity and pressing of City for 90 minutes and had to sit deep.

'You can go very high to press and play a game with great intensity, but you must do this for the whole game,' he said.

'In another case, you must be disciplined, try to close the space and try to exploit the space behind the defenders.

You wondered whether his praise for City – 'after the transfer market, they improved a lot, they strengthened; its right to complement them' – was a veiled message to the Chelsea board and a management of expectations for this season.

For, though Chelsea are champions, they played as though they know their place in the new order. Conte's frustrations may well be shared by Chelsea's Sporting Director Michael Emenalo, but with a slight different twist.

His concern must be that two players he plucked as youngsters for Chelsea's future are on course to be the stars of this season for direct opponents: Romelu Lukaku at Manchester United and Kevin De Bruyne at City.

He shone on his return, none more so than when on 67 minutes Otamendi brought the ball out of defence and found the Belgian.

De Bruyne played his first touch to Gabriel Jesus before receiving a return ball and using the space he was afforded to strike a delightful, powerful, curling shot across Thibaut Courtois.

The trajectory of his run allowed him to continue into the arms of the celebrating City fans. By then, it was well deserved.

Yes, Chelsea had threatened on the counter before Morata's withdrawal and with the quick and clever reverse-pass free-kick from Fabregas on 60 minutes that found Hazard were close to scoring.

But the overall momentum was with City. Raheem Sterling consistently had the better of Marcos Alonso and Gary Cahill.

David Silva almost surprised Thibaut Courtois with a snatched shot on 30 minutes; and the Belgian goalkeeper had to react smartly again on 45 minutes when Fernandinho met De Bruyne's corner firmly.

And they might have won by a healthier margin, when Gabriel Jesus almost decapitated Antonio Rudiger with a fierce shot, which the Chelsea defender headed off the line on 85 minutes.

No matter: the result, Guardiola's first win over Chelsea, rather than the score-line, was what mattered. And it sent a decisive message as the first quarter of the season concluded.