Pep Guardiola has declared that Kevin De Bruyne “is back” after he put in an “amazing” performance as Man City beat Leicester City 1-0.

With City missing their superstar striker due to injury, an air-tight Foxes defence had kept the Premier League champions at bay for 49 minutes. But there was nothing Brendan Rodgers’ side could do about an inch-perfect De Bruyne free-kick.

The Belgian, who recently finished third in the Ballon d’Or rankings, cracked a sensational effort in off the post from 25 yards.

City were frustrated for large portions of the clash with Leicester City, who defended well to keep out their opponents. De Bruyne proved to be the match-winner in the end as he netted a free-kick shortly after the interval.

After the match Guardiola expressed his frustration during a chat Brighton midfielder James Maddison. Maddison defended Leicester’s tactical approach against Manchester City after the England international was confronted by Pep Guardiola at the end of Saturday’s Premier League clash.

With the win the champions have leapfrogged Arsenal and returned to the summit after earning a hard fought 1-0 win over the relegation threatened Foxes thanks to Kevin de Bruyne’s masterful second half free kick.

Brendan Rodgers’ side employed a safety first approach until the closing stages of the game when they began to threaten City’s goal and came close to scoring an equaliser on several occasions.

After the game, Guardiola was seen deep in conversation with Maddison and questioned why the home team didn’t show more ambition from the outset.

De Bruyne, a Belgium international, produced a perfect set-piece that flew into the top-left corner past Leicester goalkeeper Danny Ward. This is City’s second straight league win since their 1-0 defeat against Liverpool. Guardiola was full of praise for De Bruyne post-match after he was “not playing good” for a few weeks.

“That is a brilliant free-kick,” England legend and ex-Manchester City manager Stuart Pearce said. The goalkeeper has absolutely no chance. He’s had a full dive at that and he’s still a yard-and-a-half away from it.”

Leicester goalkeeper Danny Ward had not conceded for five-and-a-half hours of top-flight action and City had looked less dangerous without Haaland. However, Pearce suggests Pep Guardiola’s side are annoyingly unstoppable with players like De Bruyne.

He added: “That’s where the frustration lies. Leicester have limited Man City to not many clear-cut chances, if any. They’ve got so much quality in the line-up that they score a world-class free-kick.”

“They changed it and it was a difficult game, because they had 10 players so deep and it’s so difficult,” Guardiola told BT Sport. After we scored the goal they changed their rhythm and in the Premier League, the last few minutes are always difficult. It’s a massive victory for us.

“Kevin de Bruyne is back. He was not playing well the last few games but today he was amazing. He knows it. There was no space today, we had to be patient.”

De Bruyne added, “We made it difficult for ourselves, we were a bit tired. They were very negative for 70 minutes but then their changes made it a different game. We didn’t keep the ball in their half but we still could have scored a second.

“The free-kick goes perfectly, luckily it’s 1-0. Ederson has been great, sometimes we only talk about his distribution but he’s a great keeper and he proves it every week. We have proved we can win with or without Erling Haaland.”

Foxes manager Brendan Rodgers admitted post-match that his players “lacked belief at times” against City.

“The players carried out the gameplan as well as we could have asked them to. You have to still be in the game with 20 minutes to go. Defensively we were very, very good but we lacked belief at times and that let us down.

“We had good chances in the game and we were unfortunate not to nick something. You have to concede that you are playing arguably the best team in the world, they can play through you and around you. There are lots of elements we can be better in. But the spirit of the team and the mentality was we kept fighting.”

Asked what he and Guardiola were conversing about, Maddison said, “He was asking why we didn’t play like the last 15 minutes for the whole game. I think he realises it’s not as easy at that. But he’s a top manager with a top team so it’s always going to be tough.”

Maddison’s sentiments were echoed by BT pundit Rio Ferdinand who argued City would have picked their opponents off at will had they gone toe-to-toe with Guardiola’s men.

He said, “If they go out there and start playing like they did in the last part of the game then it’s probably 3-0 before half time most times because there be open bigger spaces for City to run into and opportunities to punish them.”

Rodgers, meanwhile, was proud of his side’s efforts but claimed they lacked belief in the closing stages when they did manage to engineer goalscoring opportunities.

He said, “The players carried out the gameplan as well as we could have asked them to. You have to still be in the game with 20 minutes to go. Defensively we were very, very good but we lacked belief at times and that let us down. We had good chances in the game and we were unfortunate not to nick something. You have to concede that you are playing arguably the best team in the world, they can play through you and around you. There are lots of elements we can be better in. But the spirit of the team and the mentality was we kept fighting.”

•  A Tell / Metro / TalkSport report