I've been criticised for saying this previously, but Keane just did what he always does. He claimed that the team that won tried harder, and the team that lost didn't try hard enough. Which is what he says after every match. You could have locked him in a cupboard during the match, and told him the result at the end, and he still would have said exactly the same thing.
Souness is pretty much the same. You could replace Souness with a tape recorder that said 'work rate' and 'dressing room' on a continual loop. Work rate...dressing room...work rate...dressing room...work rate...when I was at Liverpool...dressing room. You wouldn't have to pay that tape recorder 200 grand a year either.
According to Keane in particular, and Souness to a great extent, every football match in history has been decided by tracking back and one team trying harder than the other.
Whereas Neville and Carragher actually attempt to analyse what has occurred in a game. Neville is better at it than Carragher, but Carragher at least attempts to understand the pattern of play, and picks out things that the average punter cannot see. You couldn't have Keane on MNF because he doesn't have anything constructive to say.
The reality is that City are way, way better than United, and last night was pretty much as well as United could have expected to fare. If Lingard had taken their one clear-cut chance then they might have scraped a wholly underserved draw. Or if City had missed all of their chances then they might have got a 0-0.
They're playing against a brilliant team and squad, that are likely to have put 198 points on the board in two seasons by the end of May. They had absolutely no f*cking chance whatsoever, and were completely outclassed by a much superior team technically, as was entirely predictable before the game started. The result had nothing to do with work rate or effort.