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Men's Football De Bruyne's hat-trick of assists help Aguero hunt down Foxes

Man City 5-1 Leicester City: James Nalton reports from the City of Manchester Stadium

KEVIN DE BRUYNE tried to take the match ball from Sergio Aguero after his hat-trick of assists helped Manchester City to a 5-1 rout of Leicester City on Saturday.

Aguero’s four goals meant he kept the memento on this occasion, but De Bruyne pushed him close for the Man of the Match award.

Their manager Pep Guardiola is now looking forward to the Champions League which resumes this week, and he hopes to defeat FC Basel in the last 16 and steer his side to the quarter-finals.

“We start in the Champions League and the first target is to go to the next step forward and achieve the quarter-finals,” he said.

“We try to do better than last season and hopefully we can go through.”

They head to Switzerland for the first leg on a high following this dismantling of Leicester. De Bruyne set up Raheem Sterling to get his side on the scoreboard early, but this was cancelled out when Jamie Vardy pounced on a Nicolas Otamendi error before slotting past Ederson.

But the home side came out firing in the second period, and Aguero got the first of his four goals just three minutes into the half when he tapped in De Bruyne's cross.

The Belgian’s through ball set the striker up for his second, before a mistake from Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel laid on the hat-trick goal which Aguero chipped over the stranded Dane.

The fourth was the most impressive of them all as the Argentine blasted the ball from a distance, seeing it dip just under the crossbar at the last second to evade Schmeichel.

Guardiola warned that his side’s progress in Europe may not come as easy as it has in the Premier League. The Catalan coach is using their only league defeat of the season, against Liverpool at Anfield where they conceded three in 10 minutes, as a lesson for his players.

“We have to know that the Champions League is another competition, completely different,” he said. 

“The Champions League is about how you control the emotion and how you control the bad moments.

“The bad moments are always going to happen in 180 minutes. The 10 minutes that happen at Anfield; we are out, we are not going to go through. We are going to concede chances, we are going to concede goals; it’s how you handle that situation.”

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