FOR ALMOST AN hour Manchester United had suspended all logic at the Etihad Stadium, leading thanks to Marcus Rashford’s crossbar-kissing piledriver and an Erling Haaland miss so shocking it felt like a minor moment of Premier League history.
But ultimately this fantasy had a shelf-life too short for United and their temporary fans in Liverpool and London. Such is the chasm between the two football clubs in Manchester reality cannot be ignored for a full 90 minutes.
And so City rallied to win 3-1, making the scoreboard at least a distant relative of the match stats and underlying numbers. City had 27 shots and 73% possession; United had three shots and none of them came after the 15th minute.
United’s approach – defend deep and try to spring forward on the counter-attack – was an admission of inferiority, but they were depleted by injury, and the same policy worked for Chelsea here a couple of weeks ago.
And it seemed it might actually work for United too, when Rashford slammed a long-range strike in off the bar after only eight minutes. It was a glorious strike, but it wasn’t enough to prove a riposte to his many critics. From there, Rashford reverted to the anemic, dispirited figure he has cut for most of the season. He butchered a one-on-one chance shortly after his goal, and then miscued when Bruno Fernandes’ raking pass fell to him at the back post.
But the key moment came when he was sent scuttling down the left wing after 55 minutes, with acres of grass ahead of him. This was a traditional scene: a reprisal of the tactics used by Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. But whereas Rashford would have burst onto the ball and arced for the penalty area a couple of years ago, this time he was caught by Kyle Walker and fell under meagre contact. Rashford appealed but City played on, and moments later Phil Foden curled a gorgeous shot into the same corner of the net as Rashford found earlier in the afternoon.
The goal was stunning but entirely unsurprising, given City had long-since got the game in their death-grip. The opening quarter of the game was delightfully elastic: United threw bodies forward on the counter-attack and needed Andre Onana to keep Foden and Rodri at bay as they scrambled back.
On the 22nd minute mark, Bernardo Silva decided he had enough of this nonsense. Rather than launch a counter-attack, he stopped and held his hands in the air: City’s signal to slow the game down. From there City assumed their lethal and intricate patterns, and United should not have held their lead until half-time. How Haaland spooned over from three yards out will remain one of football’s great mysteries.
But ultimately United weren’t good enough to make the most of this astonishing stroke of luck. They were largely hopeless in possession, too often ignoring a runner in behind to recycle possession backwards, hurting nobody but themselves.
City eventually prised open United’s deep block, finally exposing Casemiro’s lack of pace, who, to that point, had been protected by the many bodies around him. Foden drifted to the left-hand side and played a one-two with Julian Alvarez before running off Casemrio, who hardly had the legs to give forlorn chase.
The third goal arrived in stoppage time, and exposed United’s greatest failing under ten Hag: their inability to play out from the back under any kind of pressure. Casemiro, pressed into a left-back position, looped a haphazard pass in-field to Amrabaat, onto whom Rodri jumped. He fed Haaland, who wasn’t going to miss for a second time.
United concede chances in precisely this way far too often, and City followed Bournemouth in exploiting it to score.
City now enter the defining stretch of their season. Next Sunday they go to what will be a feral Anfield, and then they host Arsenal at the end of the month. These are the key games in a compelling title race, a high-stakes, high-level battle from which United are a million miles.
United are now 11 points from the top four, and have a negative goal difference. They don’t counter-attack in these games as well as they used to, but more galling for Erik ten Hag is his pitch for this job involved United being comfortable on the ball and being capable of taking City on at least somewhat on United’s own terms.
Doing that today would have been an absurdity, of course, which only goes to underline the absence of progress under ten Hag. The injuries provide only limited mitigation: he will not survive Jim Ratcliffe’s best-in-class bloodletting.
City, meanwhile, are shifting ominously into gear. Liverpool and Arsenal must beat them if either hope to win the league.