Ex-Chelsea man: Jose only talked to me twice

Manchester City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne claims he only spoke to Jose Mourinho twice during his ill-fated six months under the Portuguese manager at Chelsea.

Having come off the bench against Crystal Palace and Juventus so far Saturday could be a case of “third time lucky” for De Bruyne with a place in the starting XI against West Ham on?

“I didn’t get any explanation”, De Bruyne said. I have already asked him once whether he has manipulated his shoes or the ball.

“Of course I didn’t play a lot in the Premier League and hopefully I can do well now I am here, of course, but I don’t have the feeling that I have to prove something because the first period wasn’t that good“.

“I think that’s wrong”, he said.

“Then one week before January, that’s when I said I wanted to go because even if I was training better, I was not getting any minutes. That was maybe the biggest part that went wrong [between me and Mourinho at Chelsea]”.

His compatriot Vincent Kompany this week described De Bruyne as “the most English Belgian” he has known and said: “You guys [England] should have got to him first”.

‘I know of Payet because one of my Belgium team-mates, Michy Batshuayi, played alongside him at Marseille for one season and he told me a lot about him.

“You know there is going to be a lot of pressure”, he said.

Now at the Etihad Stadium, De Bruyne insists he is a more mature individual, while he said a lack of communication gave him little chance under Mourinho. You want to hear about the project and the finances, but I was clear with City and was just waiting for the deal to be done.

The fee raised eyebrows given his previous spell in England but there may have been underlying factors behind De Bruyne’s failure at Chelsea. De Bruyne also created a club-best 111 opportunities.

As for his move to City this summer, he added: “In February I spoke with my agent and City talked to me”. They only talked about how much City paid to Wolfsburg, and how much I am going to earn. I would still have been a young player coming back from a small club to a big club and I would have had to prove myself all over again. “I was 19 and then worked with three managers [at Chelsea] and just didn’t play that much”.