He’s not a galactico, but you can see he is able to make use of the skillset he has, and is one of those “always looks to have loads of time” players.
A good few times the ball broke to him in our half and he brilliantly got us moving forward. He’s a great scanner, he sees and finds space, but importantly when the ball comes to him, he knows exactly where the nearest defender is and how much time he has. His first touches buy him time and space away from his marker and few times he allowed the ball to roll across him and start driving forward as he already knew the was no defender behind him.
I love players like this, as this simple thing anyone can do means much better effectiveness than their trickery might suggest. Charly could do this more, he very regularly doesn’t know whether he has/hasn’t got time. He’ll fight and lay the ball off ok, but makes it hard for himself in tight spaces, so he has to rush and scrap.
De Bruyne was found to scan every 2.2 seconds, so probably worth doing.