Where would Manchester City be without Kevin De Bruyne, the most complete player in the Premier League?

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They can win without Vincent Kompany, as they have shown enough times this season. They can even win without Sergio Aguero, as they showed again today. But where on earth would Manchester City be without Kevin De Bruyne, their best and most important player?

Certainly they would not be winning games like this, away at the in-form champions, at the end of a week when they lost two first-teamers to injury. If this was a win that marked out City’s improvement from last season, it was delivered by the left boot of a man whose own game has reached another level of completeness, decisiveness and power.

It was the second time this week, in fact, that De Bruyne had given City the lead, out of the blue, all by himself, just when his team-mates were short of ideas. On Tuesday night, in a game that did not exactly dominate the week’s news, he fired City ahead right-footed from 20 yards out against Shakhtar Donetsk, after a first half in which they had looked unusually limited.

But this was better: a bigger game, against a harder team, with more riding on it and less time left. There were 23 minutes left here at Stamford Bridge and thoughts were turning to the benches. City had been the better side but they had not turned their possession into a goal. They had been flashing low crosses into the box but they are built for Aguero’s near-post darts. Gabriel Jesus does not have quite the same knack.

These are the moments, ultimately, when the biggest and best players bend things their way. And there is no bigger, better player in the country right now than De Bruyne. He took a forward pass from Nicolas Otamendi in the middle of the pitch and with his first touch laid it forward to Gabriel. Bursting forward, he took the return, teed himself up with his first touch and then with his second he beat Thibaut Courtois from 25 yards. It was with his left foot, his weaker foot, not even the one he scored with on Tuesday.

When De Bruyne does that, there is something reminiscent of Steven Gerrard about how he plays: the decisiveness, the power, the ability to seize the moment. He shares Gerrard’s remarkable mix of talents, right down to the lung capacity which allows him to dominate the whole pitch. This is what makes him so important to City. They have plenty of technically good players, so many in fact that Bernardo Silva can replace David Silva as the midfield creator. But no-one can replicate De Bruyne’s athleticism which is City’s engine. When they harness that they are difficult to stop.

That is why earlier this month, after De Bruyne dominated City’s 4-0 win at Feyenoord, Pep Guardiola called him “one of the best players I have ever seen in my life”, thanks to his ability to “make absolutely everything”. He is, with all due respect to Paul Pogba, the most complete player in the league. And if there is one difference with Gerrard it is the football brain De Bruyne has, which saw him compared to Johann Cruyff as a youngster, and which makes him the perfect interpreter of Guardiola’s instructions on the pitch, in whichever precise midfield role he is given.

This season De Bruyne has mainly been playing in a deeper central role but today he was pushed out to the right as part of City’s off-balance 3-4-3. He spent the first hour or so firing in crosses, without success, but when he switched inside he scored the goal that won the game.

If there had been one criticism made of De Bruyne, even by those who know him well, it is that he did not always save his best performances for the biggest moments. His winner against Paris Saint-Germain in 2016 aside, that had been the case at City, especially in the second half of last year when Guardiola’s team started to fade. But this was the biggest game of City’s season, and one of the biggest of Guardiola’s tenure so far. And De Bruyne sorted it for City all by himself.