Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
OH MAN.. THAT WAS CLOSE
Scrappy City stumble into final after United edge it at the Etihad
TIME-WASTING, 11 men in their own third of the field, Pep Guardiola trying to hide the ball behind his back.
It is not often Manchester City stumble into a final but the relief on Guardiola’s face at the end of a second derby defeat of the season was telling.
Make no mistake, his team deserved to go through. They were the more accomplished, dominant in possession over the two legs.
But boy, did they make it difficult for themselves.
A first-half strike from Nemanja Matic, who was later sent off, gave Manchester United a small moral victory but City should have been out of sight.
Out of sight after the first leg at Old Trafford, out of sight after the early stages of this game. But if they have a non-clinical performance, they are always likely to concede.
And they are always likely to be vulnerable from set-pieces, as Guardiola pointed out ahead of kick-off.
City’s defensive indiscipline tends to yield the occasional, needless freekick and Nicolas Otamendi had already got away with one before Rodrigo made a costly, rash challenge on Jesse Lingard.
From Fred’s free-kick, Bernardo Silva’s clearing header only teed up Matic for a sweet left-footed finish.
The unnecessary free-kick concession and untidy defending pretty much summed up why City’s results this season have not been as formidable as expected.
The way the contest unfolded was not entirely unexpected.
With a two-goal advantage in his pocket, Guardiola might have been tempted to sit back, play more than a couple at the back, maybe. He might have been tempted to play
Ederson, the keeper who saves the odd shot, rather than Claudio Bravo, the keeper who does not.
Actually, that was never really going to be an option and when early chances came and went – David de Gea making a couple of decent stops from Sergio Aguero and Riyad Mahrez – the home side were always going to be a little vulnerable.
And Bravo’s unhappy knack of seeing the first shot on target whizz past him meant what looked like being a truly grotesque mismatch after one half of four was in some sort of balance after three halves.
It was always going to remain in the balance as long as the likes of Raheem Sterling, for whom very little came off, wasted opportunities such as the one gifted to him by Kevin de Bruyne.
Sterling was not the only City player slightly out of sorts. There was a long queue of characters waiting to make a mess of promising attacking
situations. Quite how David Silva and Ilkay Gundogan failed between them to capitalise on a Harry Maguire howler is anyone’s guess.
And even though their task was made easier when Matic followed his first-half yellow card foul on Mahrez with a second-half duplicate on Gundogan, it was hardly a cruise to the finish line.
There was certainly a more-thananxious moment when Otamendi – who else – upended Harry Maguire just outside the penalty area but the free-kick was wasted.
The Etihad breathed a little easier and City got there in the end. And no one was more relieved than Guardiola.
He recently suggested the Carabao Cup might be scrapped … if he wins it again, he should get to keep it.