Kevin De Bruyne has revealed it took all of 15 minutes in training for Pep Guardiola to plan Manchester City’s 3-1 mauling of their neighbours Manchester United in the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final.

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United beat City in the Premier League last month but on Tuesday evening at Old Trafford Guardiola made an astute tactical change. With the centre‑forwards Sergio Agüero and Gabriel Jesus on the bench, he played with a false nine in a fluid front line of two No 10s. The Belgian revealed that City trained in the morning of the match but spent little time on tactical drills.

“We did 15 minutes this morning. That’s about it,” De Bruyne said. “But it’s not like we never did it before so we did already a sometimes against teams who prefer to play man against man – Cardiff, United, I think Barcelona the way we did it the first year. So we’ve done it a couple of times.”

City, winners of the competition for the past two seasons, swept into a commanding lead with three goals inside the opening 38 minutes at Old Trafford. Marcus Rashford kept United’s hopes alive by pulling one back 20 minutes from time as City eased off in the second half.

City have now won seven of their past 10 matches at Old Trafford in all competitions and are responsible for four of United’s past 12 home defeats.

“I think overall we played well,” said De Bruyne. “Even the second half they tried to put us under a little bit more pressure and we made one mistake and they got a goal out of it but I don’t think they had a lot of chances.

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“I think we should have scored more today but in the end 1-3 is a good advantage. And we know it’s not over but it was a good game for us.

“Bernardo Silva was outstanding and scored a stunning opening goal while Riyad Mahrez added the second. The third was an own goal from Andreas Pereira.”

City have adapted to the threat of counterattacks, believes De Bruyne. “I think we had our chances, we still tried to stay more in shape defensively. People always look that we try to keep the ball but we try to keep the ball in a certain way so that defensively we don’t try to get caught, obviously. We play that way and everybody knows there is space in behind – that’s the risk you take with the way that we play and that’s something we have to calculate. But I think we minimised these counterattacks and I think we played well offensively.”