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1. That…Was not good. Both teams will strive to identify the positives, but in reality this was a poor game that looked every inch like a competition between a pair of fighters in the middle of the table. If that exact same match were played between Southampton and Aston Villa, the teams that sand Manchester clubs in the table, no one would be talking about jostling in the top four, regardless of the title challenges. If a great derby is an opportunity to make a statement, then there was nothing here from either team that worried title contenders like Tottenham, Liverpool or West Ham.
2. If you’ll excuse the brief distraction (finding 16 takeaways can be tricky even in the best games), let’s go back six days to Sky’s autopsy on Boring, Boring Tottenham. We talked about how strange everything was at the timeso we will not be working on the point, but on the hour that Redknapp, Souness and company spent worrying about how the players can be happy playing in a way that produces a 2-0 derby win (including a goal from the contender of the season) to return to the top of the table looks even more jarring after sitting through these 90 minutes of hearse in Manchester. This game was more of Mourinho than anything Mourinho has ever seen in Mourinho history on the most Mourinho day of his life.
3. If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I’ve tried to throw that to the editor, and she says there are no dice; we still need 16 things. Sigh. Penalty fee. Let’s look for a positive. United may have been the home team, but it’s definitely the team that can be a little bit happier about this. Just a little bit, mind, but definitely happier. It keeps them above City in the table, at least, but it was also a response to the bad starts that have plagued them recently. It was understandable that United were feeling a bit tired and a bit depressed after a disastrous week. But they were solid. City had only a couple of chances in the first half and even fewer in the second.
4. But how much was this due to United, and how much to City’s tactics? Given United’s much-discussed problems early in games, it was strange to see a historically advanced team so passive in such an important game. They really are a shadow of the great side from just 18 months ago. The press no longer breaks as before. Here, they really only showed something if Bruno Fernandes received the ball or seemed in imminent danger of doing so. There were a couple of moments, but that was it. And it was all, off the ball and onward, so overwhelmingly sssssllllloooooowwww.
5. Amid the pessimism and sadness, it is worth noting that both teams are five points from the top of the table. Either one could still win the league. But with City as much as United in this evidence, we’ve gotten to the point where that would be a surprise. That’s significant – a City (or United) run to the title could still happen, but you’d be very surprised to see it. Unlike last season, that has absolutely nothing to do with an unstoppable runaway opponent and everything to do with his own failings. Liverpool provided cover for City’s downfall last year that doesn’t exist now. There is a danger that we are already doing City an injustice by comparing them to back-to-back title winners. This City team is not as good as that. The players aren’t that great, and neither are the tactics. They don’t press that well, they’re less clinical, less destructive. Less fear. Once lost, it is almost impossible to regain that aura. At least half of the Premier League have viewed games against City as damage limitation exercises in recent years. That should no longer be the case.
6. Body language is somewhat difficult to read, but Kevin de Bruyne’s was interesting here. De Bruyne being De Bruyne, he still played a couple of delicious, almost kanesque passes on points, but there were also moments of disappointment of waving his arms and shaking his head for teammates who weren’t quite on his wavelength o they possessed his speed of thought. and action. He was playing the game, on his head and with his feet, on a higher plane and at a faster speed than his colleagues.
At 29, if you don’t look around and wonder what will happen next, then you are not human.
7. Perhaps most troubling of all for City, however, is that despite a clean sheet and Ederson only having to make two saves in 90 minutes, they still didn’t look particularly solid at the rear. Against a better or even more ambitious side they might have had problems. United had chances from three corners in the first half, Scott McTominay simply couldn’t apply the finishing touch at the far post after a header, while Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof headed in after finding too much room in City’s defensive areas. .
8. Everything is relative on a soporific afternoon like this, but Fred had an excellent game in United’s midfield. You probably didn’t expect things to be this comfortable, but it would be wrong not to give her at least some credit for that. Tidy and efficient on possession, which hasn’t always been the case, he completed 50 of 53 passes attempted and made three tackles. United actually had more joy going through City’s midfield than the other way around. Unexpected, and largely because of the Brazilian.
9. The Old City still appears from time to time, like a mirage. A glimpse of the team they were. However, it blinks and the new heavier gear has returned. One of those blinks produced the game’s only outstanding quality moment in 34 minutes. It was all that City were at their best and it wasn’t for the rest of this game. Gabriel Jesus came forward. He endured a couple of challenges by taking the play quickly across the field before squaring up for De Bruyne to play the right ball for Riyad Mahrez’s right run. He delayed his shot, perhaps hoping that David De Gea would get engaged. De Gea did not and blocked the shot finally meek. City could never gain momentum from that, and it was a great moment for the United goalkeeper. Everyone has an opinion on whether or not I should be on this side, but today there was only one great moment for each goalkeeper. De Gea did his job.
10. Let’s talk about the United penalty that never was, because we still need seven more things here, damn it. Notable for a couple of reasons, specifically its obvious correctness. A relief for the VAR to get one so indisputably correct, although we could all have done it with some drama to be honest. Yes, this game was so bad, so devoid of incident, that we would have welcomed the VAR piss-boiler just to remind ourselves that we are alive. It’s funny, though, how the time we’ve spent studying VAR replays has sharpened our offside spider senses. Marcus Rashford was indisputably offside when he played. By about a foot. The time was, we would all have seen it and agreed that it was tight enough to go either way. Now we don’t even need a freeze frame, regardless of Stockley Park lines, to declare it well offside and immediately worry about other things.
The ‘penalty’ was also noted as another reckless concession from Kyle Walker. He remains a player with great advantages and has done a lot to regain the confidence of coaches at the club and international levels, but he always has that reckless challenge in him. Even at its best, this year’s city team is playing on tighter margins with less possession than in the recent past. Those Walker moments just get more likely and more expensive on this team. It was just a blatant / fringe offside decision for what it cost his team here.
11. Ederson kicks. I’ve written “Sh * t” in my notes here, and as it should have been pretty clear by now, there aren’t 16 things to talk about in this game, so let’s bring it up. Definitely scraped quite a couple. Even if the rest of this city performance can no longer be considered as atypical as before, it definitely is. It is such an important part of your game that you really can’t afford to miss it.
12. Maybe we shouldn’t have been, but we were surprised by how little the game changed after the break. If it was understandable (if vaguely discouraging) that United felt they were getting enough of the game, it was surprising to think that Guardiola and City could possibly feel the same way. Ferran Torres did Some difference after replacing Mahrez. He did a couple more straight runs and injected some rhythm into a soporific afternoon, but it was far from seismic.
The absence of Sergio Agüero in the team of the day was, we were assured, nothing more than a careful “step by step” management of his return from injury, although God knows that this game was crying out for it, but the apparent belief Guardiola’s that neither Phil Foden nor Bernardo Silva, or more specifically both, could not have had a much-needed positive impact on this game is a puzzle.
13. Harry Maguire is a very good center back in football games like this. Two tackles, three interceptions, two punts, three blocked shots. He was, essentially, always there. Exactly where he needed to be, comfortably and repeatedly in the way of everything City could throw at him very slowly.
14. There is no question that 14 Conclusions would be a much better feature, in my opinion. Fourteen is simply a much higher number.
15. It’s easy to scoff at Solskjaer’s verdict on this sad game against a team United beat three times last season: “In my time against City, that’s the best performance we’ve ever had, not the best result.”
But you can see why I would say that. United shut down the game, and a four-game winning streak had also given them some leeway to take a point from it, keeping City at bay in both the match and the league table. The game essentially went according to plan for Manchester United. Solskjaer pointed out that his wins over City are wins on the fast break, and he’s right. This was the most “even” soccer game in terms of chances, possession and territory. But when Solskjaer came up with this plan, he surely couldn’t have planned to face such a poor display from the City. Whether Solskjaer’s assessment and game plan reflect negativity, pessimism or realism, given that his main qualification for the job is being so deeply imbued with Manchester United’s ineffable greatness, is up for debate.
16. We have been quite dramatically and alarmingly wrong with almost every prediction we’ve made before and during this season, so let’s try another one. We’ve drawn 15 dubious conclusions from this game, so let’s at least make one decisively bold one at the end. We definitely didn’t see the 2020/21 Premier League champions today, no matter what the bookies think or what the current closeness of the league table indicates.
Dave tickner
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