They did their best here for Pep Guardiola. They sang for him before kick-off. They hung a huge banner carrying his name, face and list of achievements over the lower tier of the huge stand opposite his seat in the dug out.
This was a show of loyalty and support as pre-orchestrated and deliberate as anything we have seen during Guardiola’s gilded tenancy at the Etihad Stadium.
But then it came to the football and Guardiola’s team of champions and internationals fell apart at the seams once again. Manchester City continue to lose games of football and they continue to lose them in a manner that speaks of unsolvable problems within.
City didn’t so much as lose this game to Manchester United as hand it to them in the final two minutes. This was death by carelessness at the Etihad and the longer it goes on, the more we start to wonder whether Guardiola will ever manage to pull his team out of a run of results that now stands at one win in eleven.
City had not been good here. They had been nowhere near the City we know. Devoid of cohesion and wit and energy and belief. It had once again been like watching a favourite childhood toy malfunctioning on the back of a fading battery.
But they were winning. With two minutes to go, they were still winning through a Josko Gvardiol header converted after 37 minutes of a desperately drab first half. A win would have been something. It would have placed City in the top four a day after Liverpool and Arsenal had both drawn. So it would have been a platform, albeit a small one.
Amad Diallo scored a 90th-minute winner as United beat City in Sunday’s Manchester derby
United had been losing until the 88th minute until a burst of brilliance from star man Amad
United manager Ruben Amorim pictured (right) embracing City boss Pep Guardiola after beating him in his first ever Manchester derby
Then, out of nowhere., they fell apart. Mattheus Nunes, playing as an emergency full-back, played a back pass straight to United forward Amad Diallo. In his haste to atone, he hacked him to the floor. Bruno Fernandes scored the penalty that followed.
That felt like a blow for City, especially to concede that way. United, though, may have deserved their draw. What they would not have expected was to win the game two minutes later.
This time it was a ball over the top from Lisandro Martinez that undid City. Ederson dashed hastily from goal, Diallo lifted the ball over him and side footed it slowly and gently in to the goal from a tight angle. Superb work from the young United player. What a prospect he is. For City and Guardiola, it was another smack over the head with a cosh that had their own names written on it.
For long periods this had been a game that lived down to its expectations. Rarely has a Manchester derby been contested by two teams so devoid of direction and confidence. Rarely has such a game meandered so aimlessly like this one did for almost all of the first half.
United manager Ruben Amorim’s decision to go without Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford was eye opening but also had an impact on the game. With United happy to sit deep in their 3-4-2-1 formation, their threat was always likely to be on the break. Rashford and Garnacho are quick.
At least one of them could have been useful. Instead, Amorim’s go-to players in that regard were Rasmus Hojlund and Diallo. The latter did have two or three opportunities to get beyond the City backline but his first half understanding of the offside law seemed to have deserted him to a quite staggering degree. He was, of course, to improve in that regard.
City, for their part, were nowhere near the City we know, a much better looking team on paper than on the field. Phil Foden was probably the pick of Guardiola’s team while Jeremy Doku at least asked some questions of Noussair Mazraoui down the left hand side of the home team’s attack.
City were indeed the better team for the opening fifteen minutes as this game settled in to a pattern familiar with those who have watched them over the last decade. City with the ball, United unambitious.
Amad’s late winning goal came just moments after he had won a penalty kick for his team
United captain Bruno Fernandes converted the penalty to draw United level in the 88th minute
Man City defender Josko Gvardiol (centre) had scored the game’s first goal in the 36th minute
United were dealt an early injury blow when Mason Mount (right) was forced off the field
Mount received a hug from United manager Amorim as he departed after less than 15 minutes
The only difference was that City didn’t create anything. They were neat enough up to the edge of the United penalty area but pretty impotent from that point on. Indeed United were just starting to impose their own football on the game when they suffered their first blow of the afternoon, Mason Mount suffering yet another injury and making way, seemingly in tears, for Kobbie Mainoo.
City did register a shot in the 21st minute as Foden volleyed low and powerful from the edge of the area with his left foot. He was about three feet wide of the near post. Ten minutes later, United finally broke with real cohesion only for a move started in his own half by Manuel Ugarte ending with the same player blazing a shot miles over after a similarly lame effort from Martinez failing to beat the first City player standing in his way.
Within all of this the City centre forward Erling Haaland conducted an increasingly physical battle with a variety of United players. At corners, his marker was Hojlund, who seemed determined never to let go of his shirt.
In open play, it was often Harry Maguire. It was clearly a United tactic and given that Haaland ended the first half without an effort on goal, it could be said to have worked however illegal it often looked.
United still went in behind, though. A drive from Bernardo Silva from his own half won City a free-kick and from there they worked the ball to the other side and won a corner. This was played short and when Kevin de Bruyne looped it in, Gvardiol jumped largely unimpeded to head in from six yards. Hojlund and Diogo Dalot were in the vicinity but both got rather stuck under the ball meaning that Gvardiol’s task was nowhere near as onerous as it should have been.
City maybe deserved their lead. Maybe. United briefly rallied and a childish exchange between Hojlund and Kyle Walker ended with the City captain throwing himself down in embarrassing fashion. Both were booked and then United threatened from the free-kick. Signs of life from those in red.
Amorim looked a little forlorn on the touchline. The realities of life at Old Trafford are his to carry now and it’s not easy when you have a group of players as modest as this to try and mould in a progressive team. They ended the half without a shot on goal and it remained this way at the hour mark. In their away defeat Arsenal, United managed just two.
A glancing Amad header was touched round the post by City goalkeeper Ederson in the 61st minute. A moment later Hojlund fell under a challenge from Ruben Dias and had a reasonable shout for a penalty overturned. United were in the game at least. City needed a second goal and in order to do that they needed to muster a little possession. This really was a very strange derby indeed.
United goalkeeper Andre Onana was well beaten for City’s opener and he barely even moved
Sunday’s game became rather heated at times, which is not unusual for a Manchester derby
Rasmus Hojlund (left) and Kyle Walker (right) were both booked after they went head to head
Man City manager Pep Guardiola (centre) pictured giving instructions to No 9 Erling Haaland
Guardiola’s City side have now failed to win in 10 of their last 11 matches in all competitions
With just over 20 minutes left Guardiola sought an intervention. His team were winning but were not comfortable. So on came Mateo Kovacic for De Bruyne. A holding player for a safe breaker. It said everything about the state of this game and felt like the smart play from the City manager.
Within minutes, though, United had produced the best bit of football of the whole afternoon to cut through their opponents. Mazraoui hustled Doku out of possession on the half way line to feed Hojlund and the Dane’s through ball was perfectly timed to free Fernandes. All the United captain had to do was beat Ederson and find the net to put his team back in the game. But he did the former and not latter and as the ball drifted wide of the far post one wondered if United’s big moment had come and gone.
Haaland almost punished them immediately at the other end, turning on a loose ball to deliver his first strike on goal of the game. Martinez blocked it well and with a little over ten minutes remaining the game was finally showing signs of competitive life.
City should have seen it out but they didn’t. With four minutes to go, their stand-in left back Nunes played his fatal back pass and within seconds had handed United a penalty as he tried desperately to atone for his error. Fernandes scored and that was 1-1.
That should have been enough for United but it wasn’t. With City’s minds scrambled, they couldn’t cope with Martinez’s long pass over the top. Ederson came when he should have stayed at home and as such was caught in no man’s land. Diallo’s first touch to loop it over the City goalkeeper was terrific and his second was even better, nudging it on the volley towards goal. Still Gvardiol should have cleared it on the line but somehow managed to over run it. The ball trickled over the line and somehow, quite improbably, United had won it.
