JACK GAUGHAN: It was the day that De Bruyne's absence really hit home for City

One day last week, Jack Grealish stole into a picture of Manchester City’s five captains after Rodri told him to take Kevin De Bruyne’s place while they waited for the Belgian.

Grealish being Grealish, he happily smirked his way through the photo call. De Bruyne eventually turned up to take his rightful place and will do so again when he returns from injury, months from now.

It wasn’t until Saturday that the reality of how much City miss him hit home. Forgetting De Bruyne has been relatively easy as Pep Guardiola’s side won every week, but they needed him at Molineux. Badly.

And they will yearn for the Premier League’s finest midfielder on plenty more occasions until his hamstring problem clears up, probably in the new year. He has that indefinable ability to take games away from stubborn opponents. De Bruyne does things that alter the course of matches in a way nobody else can.

Watching wave after wave of fairly ponderous attacks, it was easy to imagine De Bruyne taking a ball 30 yards from goal, pinging it over the top for Erling Haaland and City breaking Wolves’ resistance in an instant. De Bruyne has always given Guardiola’s men a gear change.

He is not there to win every game for them like Haaland; he is there to win clunky, bitty, weary ones just like this. Rodri’s absence presented a problem, too. Wolves broke so easily, highlighting what a huge figure the Spaniard is for City these days.

But a fit De Bruyne with a working radar would surely have won this game for City and those are the fine margins in a title race that is shaping up nicely.

Nonetheless, Wolves were superb. Craig Dawson and Max Kilman shepherded Haaland masterfully, reducing the Norwegian to 15 touches. And it was the sort of blood and thunder day —