De Bruyne relishing link-up with Silva

“You never know which team will win in the Premier League – Liverpool came here and beat us but before that they lost to Crystal Palace and then Palace lost to Sunderland”. There have been seven in all for the club.

But despite both players operating in similar positions, the 24-year-old is confident they can develop a fruitful understanding. I think it’s also good for his confidence he’s coming back – he will get some minutes, get some confidence.

Caballero’s last performance for City came in the 4-1 defeat against Spurs at White Hart Lane in September and he is now looking to atone for such a subpar performance.

And on the only occasion Silva, de Bruyne and Aguero have played together, Kun score five as Newcastle were blitzed 6-1. “Our style will be the same, that we try to play football, to build up from the back, but of course in direct play it needs to be changed a little bit”.

In his withdrawn manner, Pellegrini praised De Bruyne.

“It was a very important reaction”, said Pellegrini.

But if Southampton are to win the game, they’re going to need to attack as well as defend.

He limped off with an ankle injury and will miss tomorrow’s Capital One Cup quarter-final with Hull.

De Bruyne’s Belgium teammate Vincent Kompany is another City player who has been sidelined and has sat out their last three games with a calf problem.

“Joe Hart has a muscle injury”, said Van Gaal.

Southampton are eighth in the table after 13 matches, six points behind City.

A concern for the home side was the sight of Sergio Agüero limping off after an hour. Hart, expected to be out for 10 days, sustained the injury in Wednesday’s 1-0 loss to Juventus in the Champions League. Southampton are a great team and although they are not as good as Manchester City they will manage to provide solid competition.

De Bruyne believes his side can duplicate that run.

“If you want to be involved in the title race you can not drop more points at home”.

As a result, they are no longer guaranteed top spot in Group D with one game to go ahead of next month’s draw for the last 16.

Pellegrini has revealed that taking off the star striker was just a precautionary measure and insisted that the forward was not supposed to last much longer in the game, as decided before the match.