Reason to be cheerful: Stunning fightback shows that City will not be losers for long
By Martin Samuel
At some stage it is going to hit Manchester City that they actually lost this one. Maybe when they are at a loose end on the weekend of January 28; or on the day the FA Cup is removed from the trophy room at the Etihad Stadium, to begin the journey to its next destination. Asked for his feelings immediately after the game, manager Roberto Mancini said: ‘I feel good.’ He was surely not being entirely truthful.
Nobody likes failing to defend a prize at the first attempt, or losing to a rival, definitely not at home, and three goals down at half-time, Mancini must have been hugely concerned at what he saw. City ended the first 45 minutes in disarray. Yet what followed explained Mancini’s bullish mood, having seen the combative character of his team inspire a thrilling revival. City were exceptional in the way they ran Manchester United to the finishing line, outstanding in the spirit and technique they showed, impressive in their ability to take instruction.
Rather than throwing the kitchen sink at United, Mancini and assistant David Platt spent much of the time in the technical area ordering calm and patience. They waited for United to make mistakes and with Sir Alex Ferguson’s team enduring a rough patch, the mistakes came. Had referee Chris Foy not missed a Phil Jones handball in the 83rd minute, the scores could have been levelled. Then again, had Foy not chosen to deliver another performance that was, at best, inconsistent and, at worst, a booby-trap from which the spectacle was lucky to escape, who knows what would have happened.
City’s FA Cup run was his collateral damage.
Vincent Kompany was shown a straight red card for a tackle on Nani that divided the city on red and blue lines, although most neutral observers had sympathy for the dismissed man. It was certainly early in the day for such a dramatic judgement, just 11 minutes gone when the City captain was, too. Yes he dived in with a degree of recklessness, but he won the ball cleanly, with one foot, and made no contact with the player. A yellow for dangerous play would probably have been fair.
Maybe it was worth a yellow and a half considering the consequences if Nani’s avoidance technique was not so nimble. A red seemed harsh; the four-match ban Kompany could receive for his second dismissal of the season, appeal pending, even harsher. The role of United’s players in pressuring the official into such a defining action was equally unedifying. Indeed, as United’s first-half goals rained in, it looked as if Foy had destroyed the contest.
It is testament to City and a worrying development for Ferguson that even a three-goal and one-man lead is barely enough to keep the neighbours at bay these days. The return of Paul Scholes to the midfield following his retirement is hardly a positive sign and the defence is creaking, particularly Rio Ferdinand, whose berth in the England squad next summer looks more vulnerable by the week. It is an inescapable fact that United’s success is roped to the form of Wayne Rooney these days, and so it was on Sunday.
His two goals were the difference and also provided the counter-argument to City’s complaints about Kompany’s red card. United were already a goal ahead when the decision was made and it was Rooney who put them there. Like John Terry, he often seems at his best in the centre of a storm and coming the day after headlines had predicted his departure following a fall-out with Ferguson, this was one of those times.
Rooney’s header to separate the teams after 10 minutes was dynamite. He began the move with a pass out wide to Antonio Valencia and completed it with bravery, physically stronger than Micah Richards and first to the ball. Cristiano Ronaldo used to score headers like that. He probably still does for Real Madrid, the team now taking the challenge to Barcelona in Spain.
So United have recent and painful experience of losing a marquee name to a rival.
Valencia is a good foil for Rooney, too, because he delivers the ball quickly and directly.Rooney often looks frustrated waiting for Nani to pull the trigger, but Valencia is less complex. Rooney’s header beyond the reach of understudy goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon came by virtue of Valencia’s quick thinking.
Rooney wheeled away in full delirious, badge- kissing mode, a point proved. Many find this celebration irksome but if Rooney is genuine in his protestation that talk of his unhappiness at United is false, what else is he to do? Hand out leaftlets, make an announcement over the public address system? Raising the club crest to his lips was his way of miming love and loyalty.
True, he also once unveiled a T-shirt bearing the legend, ‘Once a blue, always a blue’ while at Everton, before decamping to Manchester’s reds amid accusations of treachery, but he has been insistent that rumours of his departure on this occasion are greatly exaggerated.
Ferguson is equally insistent on the subject.
After the game he compared Rooney to Paul Gascoigne in his ability to make headlines and sell newspapers, contending that the player would always have to put up with a greatly overworked and under-informed rumour mill. Yet when Rooney is left out of a recent game with Blackburn for disciplinary reasons and then fined, at a time when questions are again being asked about United’s ability to compete with so much debt attached to the club, speculation was an obvious product.
It was not so long ago that Rooney did genuinely and publicly want out and many of the problems that unsettled him last season have subsequently intensified. guaranteed success is the itch he needs to scratch, where could he go anyway? To move across Manchester would make him a prisoner in his walled Cheshire mansion, while Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool have even greater problems than United and Tottenham Hotspur are not yet established as a Champions League club.
His only option would be to travel abroad — and only then to Barcelona or Real Madrid. And why would United wish to dispense with a genuinely world-class talent? They do not have enough players of Rooney’s invention in the squad, as it is. Whoever he played for on Sunday would have won. Had he been in the blue of City, they would be defending the FA Cup still later this month.
And, deep down, Ferguson knows it, just as he knows that, in victory, this game spoke as worryingly of United’s current predicament as it offered strange positives for City. Ferguson is not so blessed with brilliance that he could afford to lose his talisman. Mancini, meanwhile, said he felt more confident than ever that City could win the league.
Combine this squad and Rooney and it would be a certainty. Then the city truly would be theirs.
