Only Lionel Messi is better than De Bruyne, says Pep Guardiola

The victory saw Manchester City continue their flawless start to the season.

In contrast, Guardiola suffered defeat in his first game as Bayern Munich boss, a 4-2 German Super Cup loss to Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund.

“Numbers are numbers. One record will be for another person to beat”, said Guardiola.

“We’ve won five games in the Premier League but in our world it’s better not to read”. I heard from years ago the Premier League is the toughest league and I am going to accept that.

City won their Champions League game midweek 4-0 and Guardiola spoke about the importance of their victory last night, “The important thing is we won a game just a few days after a Champions League game”. To be the best in the league, it depends if he is going to win the titles.

“We are in September”.

“Messi is on a table on his own. But that table aside, Kevin can stay there”, Guardiola told reporters at the Etihad Stadium. And against Bournemouth it was until now, the best team (we have faced) who created more problems when they had the ball – the other teams played long balls. “But sometimes we were aggressive and we won the balls in a unsafe position for them and we could use good counterattacks to make clear chances”.

“He is aggressive without the ball, but especially with the ball it is clear he knows already everything, he sees absolutely everything and in front of the goal he scores and makes assists”. He decides what you have to do at the right moment every time.

“He’s there, making every decision, calling all the shots and getting a great performance out of them”, he added. That’s why he is a player at another level. “We are lucky to have him”.

“We will take care of him and I hope he will enjoy it with us to play his wonderful football”.

The £20.4million star was puzzled by the fans as he made his debut in the win, with the attendance figure only standing at 30,270 – with nearly 1,000 of those Gladbach fans – regardless of the fact that the match was postponed for 24 hours.

“It was hard for Jack”. “He understands the game, is physical, strong and helps us out defensively”. The second one is the one that really hurts because at 1-0 you’re still in the game and then we concede from our set play. Our plan wasn’t to sit as deep in the first half but we ended up getting trapped.

Howe said, “Fair play to them”.