No meeting of the elite, this was too simple

We’ll get to the match in due course. To begin with, let’s talk about the first 12 minutes. Possession statistics can be rather over-rated. Just having the ball isn’t enough. It’s where you have it and what you do with it that counts.

leicester won the league with ordinary possession numbers. Spain made pass after pass after pass against Russia in the World Cup last summer, and lost.

Sometimes, however, the numbers are too compelling to be avoided. So here goes: at the time David Silva scored Manchester City’s opening goal, in the 12th minute, Manchester United had made 11 passes, of which just five had been successful.

Drink that in for a moment. Those are not statistics from a Manchester derby. Not a conventional one. They are not, to be fair, the numbers from a meeting of elites, either. A cup match, Premier league versus fourth or fifth tier maybe.

If City end up playing Stockport in the FA Cup, those are the figures one might expect to read.

Yet this was Manchester United: a club who once scoffed at the very idea that City could be their equals. So however close the game became, however much Jose Mourinho’s team got back on track, those first 12 minutes were astonishing.

It is very hard to win a game when so thoroughly starved of the ball. At times, City were operating with 91 per cent possession and it does not take a mathematical genius to question United in those circumstances.

They could not get out of their half, they could not place pressure on City’s goal. Sometimes rope-adope can be a viable tactic. let an opponent tire and take advantage. except City did not really tire.

They lost their way a little in the first half, recklessly allowed United a glimmer of hope in the second, but the scoreline was vindication of their superiority.

Manchester United had pulled off a counter-attacking smash and grab against Juventus on Wednesday but they were never close to one here.

There was always the feeling that, if they had drawn level, City had extra in reserve.

Their third goal, scored by substitute Ilkay Gundogan, was the result of a seemingly endless passing move, the length of a 1970s concept album but with greater purpose. It encapsulated the difference between these teams.

United haven’t got that ambition in them, even if they had the personnel. Whisper it, but they missed Paul Pogba, who plays a key role in the transition phase. Romelu