City title put on ice after Pogba comes to life in stunning United comeback
His hair was unquestionably the wrong colour for this Manchester derby and there was a moment in the first half when he failed to dribble his way out of defence that you wondered if Paul Pogba’s confidence might have taken one blow too many for the superstar ego to survive.
Yet two goals down at half-time, and the £89million man was about to play his part in what might have been the finest bit of sabotage Jose Mourinho ever sprang on an opponent dreaming of their day of triumph. This was a second-half comeback that made you question everything you thought you knew about the Premier League season 2017-2018, a reversal that might have come too soon to change the destiny of this title race but gave a clue to the factors that might define the next.
City could yet win it next weekend, if they beat Tottenham at Wembley and Manchester United lose to West Bromwich Albion next Sunday, an unlikely outcome, although no less surprising than this change in fortune.
At half-time United looked flat out of confidence – a team bowing to the inevitable with no belief and no shots on target until an imperceptible shift in the game’s flow produced a result at complete odds with the first half.
Pep Guardiola’s team had not been beaten at home in the league since Dec 3, 2016, and this was the first time any of the three clubs the Catalan has managed had conceded three goals in consecutive games. But it was more about the contrast in the two halves, when only Raheem Sterling’s profligacy before the break had stopped City’s lead from being even greater.
Mourinho would later say that at half-time he told his three midfielders, including Pogba, that he was happy with their performance and asked only that Alexis Sanchez and Jesse Lingard make their presence felt more in the game. He seemed to say this was a match that was still on a knife-edge at the break and yet such was the difference in the confidence that Pogba’s two goals, and a winner from Chris Smalling, felt implausible when the two sides came back to the pitch.
Guardiola refused to blame his defence and predicted that there will be no after-effects for that three-goal chase in the Champions League quarterfinal second leg against Liverpool on Tuesday. They have had such certainty all season until this occasion, when it was clear that confidence in football is a mysterious commodity that can be lost as quickly as it is accumulated.
City had it in a masterful first half in which Vincent Kompany and then Ilkay Gundogan gave them the lead, and then they lost it rapidly. They might point to a challenge by Ashley Young on sub Sergio Aguero that should have been a penalty, and Sterling hit the inside of a post. There was one more brilliant save by David de Gea, from Aguero, to secure the result, and yet City had thrown away a two-goal lead at home.
Guardiola afterwards launched into with one of the philosophical rambles in which he specialises, arguing that perhaps his team will now “get more credit if we are able to win the Premier League [for people to acknowledge] how tough it is to win.”
Unquestionably his defence was found wanting in the second half, but their manager did not see it that way, instead ruing those chances that were missed before the break.
He shook hands with Mourinho at the end and then sought out Pogba on the pitch for a private word, although he said later it was just a message of congratulation rather than clarification over whether the Frenchman really was for sale in January. Mourinho enjoyed suggesting later that he was above participating in that particular argument. It will surely be revisited at some point.
Mourinho may always remember his hijacking of Liverpool’s title bid in 2014 – when he was Chelsea manager – as his finest intervention in a race he could not win, but this one was up there. City had the crowd mosaic before kick-off and there was a different atmosphere around the place. Now it might be their home game against Swansea City on April 22 that they finally seal the title.
There was no Kevin De Bruyne in the City line-up, nor Aguero or Gabriel Jesus, although they all came on by the end. Kyle Walker and Aymeric Laporte were on the bench with four changes in all from the team that started against Liverpool three days earlier.
When finally City got into their rhythm after 10 minutes there was no question they had the confidence. If anything, you thought that United might be able to mount a grinding and protracted defence of the stalemate but when Antonio Valencia sliced a clearance over his own goal for a corner on 25 minutes that looked unlikely.
In the penalty area as they waited for Leroy Sane’s corner, Smalling realised with a creeping horror that he had lost Kompany and was still hanging on to the City captain’s shirt when the big Belgian headed the first goal past De Gea – the third from a set-piece against United this season.
The second City goal arrived six minutes later from a De Gea clearance miscued straight to Sane. It went from Gundogan to Sterling and back again to the German, who turned majestically around Nemanja Matic with his left foot and connected with his right to score. United were close to capsizing and the chances Sterling missed, both from David Silva’s through balls, were the only reprieve.
Pogba struck his team’s first attempt on target four minutes into the second half and scored his first soon after when Matic chested down Sanchez’s cross from the right, and the Frenchman nipped in ahead of Ederson to toe the ball in. Within two minutes there was another, Pogba leaping to head the cross from Sanchez into the only corner of Ederson’s goal he could not reach.
At the same end he had previously rode Kompany’s coat-tails in the first half, Smalling met Sanchez’s ball from the left again with the side of his foot for the thrilling winner. This time it was Kompany wondering if he might have done better, and the mood seemed to be catching among a City team tasting defeat on a day when they could only have imagined winning.