City a class apart in United demolition
Manchester derby ends in 3-0 rout by Pellegrini’s visitors
MANCHESTER — The 3-0 score line lies. Manchester City’s margin of victory may look large but it still did not reflect the visitors’ superiority. Manuel Pellegrini’s side were hungrier, faster, stronger, more intelligent and better organized than David Moyes’s anemic hosts, shadows of the champions they became last season. It could have been four. It could have been even more.
This was so poor from Moyes and United. There were some positives. Wayne Rooney ran himself into the ground, even when Moyes’s changing tactics took him into midfield, wasting the striker’s capabilities. David De Gea again stood strong in goal, making some vital saves as the champions’ defence dissolved. A third positive for United was that their supporters did not turn on the players or Moyes. Otherwise this was abject from United.
City were too good from back to front. Joe Hart was commanding in goal on the few occasions required. Yaya Toure ran midfield and scored City’s late third. Fernandinho was excellent alongside Toure, brushing aside United’s attempts at settling. David Silva darted around, creating. Edin Dzeko took his two goals well.
The clock had shown 43 seconds of the 150th league meeting between these rivals when City stormed through to score. The surprise was that it took them so long. Moyes had begun three in midfield, a plan naively designed to deal with Toure and Fernandinho and the movement of the interchanging Silva and Samir Nasri behind Dzeko.
Moyes’s cautious game-plan was blown away by City’s tempest of a start. Never before had United conceded a Premier League goal in the first minute at Old Trafford. Moyes had wanted to make entries in the record books but not like this.
His tactics were too negative and United paid the price. The problem for United was that their most consistently creative player, and best forward, Rooney, was now playing in midfield. At 2-0 down. With 10 minutes left, Rooney took a free-kick which the excellent Hart punched clear. City were still too good, still too much a class apart. There was an inevitability and pure ease in the way Toure took the ball past Rafael.
Moyes had clearly had enough of watching this pummelling close-up and retreated to the dug-out seats, leaving Steve Round to stand on the edge of the technical area.
United supporters had refrained from any criticism of the dispiriting events unfolding in front of them. They kept singing to the end, but it must have been galling.
City made it 3-0 late on when James Milner crossed, Toure worked the ball away from Evra and then placed his shot low past De Gea. At the end, City hardly celebrated. This was inevitable.