Not sure if it’s been mentioned but Mike Dean’s performance was a consummate display of smoke and mirrors, aided and abetted by his assistant minions.
1. Sterling who had a pretty poor game was hacked at repeatedly in the opening minutes, Dean who has previous with Raz (Bournemouth) shrugs his shoulders and let’s them play on.
2. Gündogan who again had a poor game nicks the ball away from their latest star, the ball is travelling forwards, Dean seems happy to play on but as the reds do their usual whinging he reacts and appears to think “yeah why not”. Fernandinho is booked for complaining. Seconds later City are a goal down.
3. With City breaking, Agüero lays the ball off and is hacked down by Maguire, he would later leave the field and have an ice back on his knee, no yellow card. As it’s becoming more and more obvious Dean is helping them just as he did Spurs away in our last defeat it dawns on him he must do something outlandish to keep the objectivity illusion going.
4. Step forward Fred, Otamendi catches him and although he goes down theatrically it looks a pen, with City breaking forward he pulls them back to book Fred, was Dean stopping the game in the hope he got a word in his ear “penalty” or was he grand standing knowing full well the red unwashed would be aghast? And thus the illusion is kept going.
5. The assistant bell ends have been told repeatedly on tight calls don’t raise your flag, Agüero is played in one on one, bell end raises his flag, instinctively everyone hesitates but Agüero keeps his cool and slots home, De Gea doesn’t move, double bluff? The TV replays show Agüero level, then up pops a magic hand drawn line to show Agüero “shoulder” is offside but no corresponding vertical line is drawn to the defender, very quickly the game is re-started. Now the cynic in me wonders if the VAR referee had sussed the situation, knew the Lino had fucked up and also knew Utd would kick up a huge stink “we stopped playing” etc, City then go on and win and there’s a national enquiry. Hence the lesser evil is to rule out what appeared a perfectly good goal.
tin foil hat stuff ? Maybe, maybe not.