This need to be copied and pasted everytime someone criticizes Jose for letting go of KDB
Except it's just a too simplistic view.
Chelsea bought him in January 2012 after he won all kind of plaudits in Belgium at Genk.
He went to Bremen for the 2012-2013 season again impressing in a poor Bremen team. Was one of the main reasons they managed to avoid relegation.
He had such a good season that Klopp wanted him at Dortmund as the replacement of Götze in the summer of 2013 and Rudi Völler tried everything to get him signed for Leverkusen.
De Bruyne was very keen on a big money transfer to Dortmund, being offered a central role in an exciting team which just played the Champions League final.
Only after Mourinho called him after taking the job at Chelsea and telling him that he saw De Bruyne having an important role in his Chelsea team for the upcoming season, De Bruyne opted out of a transfer to Dortmund.
He was Chelsea's most impressive player that pre-season causing a panic when he did his knee in one of the last friendlies in Asia. Was fit just in time for the Hull City game where Sky gave him MOTM. Was dropped for the following game against Villa and had a poor game in the 0-0 at Old Trafford against Evra in the next.
After that he barely featured. He wouldn't start another EPL game, accumulating only 132 minutes for Chelsea and would only feature in the games in the League Cup in which he, devoid of any rhythm, would fail to make an impact. And unfortunately for De Bruyne, he's not really the type of impactplayer that can change a game coming off the bench.
At the end of november there were increasing questions of the press about the lack of playing time for De Bruyne after which Mourinho implied not being happy at what he saw in training. Think in the lines of all the Shaw statements. De Bruyne, who already had the reputation of speaking his mind in Belgium, gave a firm rebuttal of these claims, stating that he even lost a few pounds the past weeks and was training harder then ever. Mentioning that it was a shame that Chelsea didn't have open trainingsessions to prove his work ethic to the public. I'm inclined to believe him here, since KDB's work ethic has been questioned only once and praised in Genk, Bremen, Wolfsburg and City.
Mourinho and De Bruyne smoothed things over in the beginning of December with Mourinho pointing to the busy calender in December and stating that De Bruyne would certainly receive more chances. Except they didn't and De Bruyne made his mind up and asked for a transfer out of Chelsea.
In hindsight you can understand Mourinho's reasoning at the time. De Bruyne was a relative low-key signing of Chelsea for a cheap amount and the noises he made at Bremen didn't really filter through to the English media at the time. He was competing against Schürrle, a seasoned German international, Oscar and Willian, 2 big money signings, Hazard and Lampard. He was the political safe bet to sacrifice in terms of playing time. I still feel that he by no means was less then Schürrle, Willian or Oscar but he was given way less chances and was just much more easy to justify dropping towards the press and fans. Even in november most of the questions regarding KDB's lack of minutes came of the continental press.
De Bruyne, 5 months earlier courted by the German topteams, felt betrayed by Mourinho and whined and begged to get out with Mourinho eventually relenting and receiving a nice fee from Wolfsburg. After a handfull of games he found his rhythm and immediatly starting impressing in the Bundesliga again.