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Pogba finally comes to the party to make City wait for the title joy as...
IT MERELY delays the inevitable but given that they are no longer even the best team in their city, Manchester United will take what they can get. Given a chance to seize temporary Mancunian bragging rights, they did so in the most dramatic fashion.
Indeed, so convoluted was their victory yesterday at the Etihad — City’s first defeat here in the Premier League since 2016 — that at times it reminded you of the Manchester City of old.
There they were in full cry, cruising towards a record-breaking title win with games to spare. Two-nil up at half-time, United were embarrassing themselves.
It was pretty awful for Alex Ferguson when Sergio Aguero wrested the title from them with the last kick of the season in 2012. But as he watched the first half yesterday, he might have reflected this seemed worse; at least his side were in that title race and were not surrounded by City fans.
Pep Guardiola’s swaggering team, with a clutch of reserves, were weaving their magic and the party was in full swing. Jose Mourinho was reduced to muttering at the fourth official and bemoaning the chasm between then teams.
And yet Paul Pogba, hair dyed light blue but otherwise anonymous, took a step forward. The player United thought they had signed suddenly emerged. His two goals in 97 seconds transformed the game before a lovely volley from Chris Smalling won it.
It seemed we had been invited to attend a public humiliation. Yet, like Samson tearing down the temple on his tormentors, United managed to turn it into a roar of defiance. But the start was tetchy and aggressive. Ashley Young felled Raheem Sterling. Nemanja Matic was leaving his mark on a few players. Vincent Kompany, the most experienced man on the pitch, looked nervous, misplacing passes. There was little coherence to the game. It had the frenzy of an old-style Mancunian derby but little of the technique.
United even looked content early on. After all, this was a City side resting Kevin de Bruyne, Kyle Walker, Aguero, Gabriel Jesus and Aymeric Laporte.
The team beaten up at Anfield was only partially present and the return leg on Tuesday was uppermost in the club’s mind. It was not close to their best side and, as such, you felt United at full strength should cope.
Yet, notwithstanding their capitulation to Liverpool, City have usually found a way to sparkle in the Premier League, whatever team is picked.
So it was yesterday. City were virtually invited to take control when United conceded an unnecessary corner in the 25th minute. Leroy Sane lifted the ball in and Kompany, the captain who joined the club just before their transformation at a time when Darius Vassell was among their key attacking players, looked a man possessed as he hunted down the ball.
Smalling had hold of his shirt — had Kompany not scored it would surely have been a penalty — but it made little difference. As Smalling forlornly clung to the hem of his garment, Kompany sprinted, rose and headed home.
Taking the lead from a set-piece was a nod to their English roots. Thereafter, they returned to the Dutch-Catalan mindset but again they were aided inexplicably by United.
David de Gea’s weak kick out in the 30th minute was seized by Sane, who threaded the ball through to David Silva. He in turn played in Ilkay Gundogan and, with an elegance characteristic of this team, spun round while back-heeling the ball into a shooting position and stuck home decisively.
Mourinho was unsettled. He grumbled to fourth official Craig Pawson. He stood defiant in the technical area. But he knows when a team is insufficient for the task.
His team mustered nothing by response. Instead, he watched on as Sterling spurned the opportunities to turn a healthy start into a rout.
In the 33rd minute, he was played in by Silva and, with time and space, lifted the ball high over the bar. In the 36th minute, Silva again the provider, he did similar. In fact, 4-0 would not have flattered City at that stage. United looked far from a Mourinho team: discordant, unsure of their shape and second best by far.
Conventional wisdom suggested United could not be as lame come the re-start, that Mourinho would insist on a reaction.
Yet with City, who knows? Their capacity to humiliate their neighbours was evident. The moment was there to be seized. And when Sterling played in Gundogan in the 51st minute and the German lifted another chance over the crossbar, there was little to suggest the imminent riposte.
Yet Pogba, always the centre of attention — just seemingly never for his football — sensed a time of reckoning.
With that light blue hair — Gary Neville was aghast — and with the game passing him by yet again, he did what so many have been waiting for over the last 20 months: he took hold of a game and wrested the momentum from United’s opponents. The first goal owed as much to intricate build up play by his team-mates and the dexterity of Alexis Sanchez, wriggling away from Nicolas Otamendi to tee up Ander Herrera. He deftly chested the ball into the path of Pogba and from close range he prodded home to induce some hope.
Less than two minutes later, he had the band of United fans in the