[sullydnl]

A lot of what happened today isn't that surprising given Mourinho's record against Guardiola. This tends to be what happens when they go head to head.

Throwing players in at the deep end when they've barely featured this season was odd though.

 

[Macern]

That was just so shit. Weekend is ruined

 

[Get In Scholesy]

I thought it was more of us being poor than it was City being any special. Once we pressed on they were pinned back, never seen that from a Guardiola side before, must be positive signs surely.

 

[Sam M]

So you thought he played well then did you?

No, he was poor, and I expect much better, because he's capable of much better, and that's what we'll get.

 

[pixel]

Bit shellshocked after that first goal.

For me best performers were Shaw, Rashford, Herrera and De Gea.

Miki was the worst player on the pitch. Oh well, give him time.

Pogba and Ibra didn't do anywhere near enough.

Agree with most of this. Though I thought Lingard was just as bad if not worse.

 

[Kaos]

Really hurts to lose a derby but still proud of our performance. In previous seasons we would have just bent over and allowed them to pile further misery.

 

[Akshay]

Miki and Lingard being unable to play a straightforward pass or hold on to the ball is what hurt us in that first half. Miki especially looked like a deer in headlights.

Yeah they did not play well but every time City had the ball there was so much space between the lines and no pressure on the ball. On another day they could have scored more.

 

[Irrational.]

The starting XI cost us the game.

Allowing Lingard and Mickey T to make their first starts of the season in a game of this magnitude backfired spectacularly. We were completely outclassed in the first half, we couldn't get anywhere near them.

Second half we improved after we brought on Herrera and Rashford, but the Fernando sub killed the game off.

Our stars underperformed: Pogba, Rooney, Zlatan, Mickey T, Lingard very underwhelming; whilst Otamendi, Stones, KdB and Silva were magnificent.

Credit to City for an enjoyable game and getting their tactics spot on. They had a plan A, B and C.

It's early on in the season and City have laid down a marker but there is room for improvement and for us to push on.

 

[Man-United]

Thank you yet again Mark Clattenburg for this result. Robbed.

 

[Red-Jeff]

I agree with this, very cynical from them. I still was disappointed with him though. There is no point starring versus Saints and going missing versus City.

Yeah fair enough, was thinking there would be a yellow at some point. Seemed like he picked up the ball 2-3 consecutively and was hacked down.

 

[rimaldo]

with bravo as their number 1, we'll finish above them.

 

[JawZ]

Couldn't capitalize when they were most vulnerable before and right after half time. We could've snatched one before the Fernando came on. Tough lost but pleased with the attitude of players.

 

[ReDDHDevilS]

Poor tactics from the manager. Why sit back at home? It's not like we're fecking Burnley playing at Nou Camp for god's sake! Do we do any pressing drill at all? We never seem to press, not a single game so far I've seen us press the opponent in their half. We just seem happy to let them play!

Every man and his dog know that Stones is very prone to mistake yet we him and Bravo, who looked seriously nervy in his debut game, have the ball when in the second half it showed that when pressed high how vulnerable they were.

Ibra barring his goal was dogshite and he has been the games he played so far. His simple passing and link-up play are terrible yet he plays full game every week. Rooney for doing the same gets dogs abuse.

Lingard and Miki were terrible as was Pogba.

City played very well specially in the 40 minutes and in the 2nd half had numerous counter attacking options and should have caused us more trouble.

 

[bleedred]

No they won't. Their defence is shite.

They can outscore any team...As we have seen, they havent had a cleansheet in any game, yet they are unbeaten..

I think they can win the Kompany's quadruple finally this year. It was only a matter of time.

 

[Litch]

The first half we played with 9 players against one of the best city performances I've seen. We have some way to go as city have more established quality players but for me Wayne shouldn't be in the team. Miki was poor today but should be number 10....

 

[Snow]

There are weaknesses in that City side that other teams have yet to exploit. Bravo is a new one. City's 2nd half performances so far have not been good in contrast with their excellent first halves. My guess is that the setup was to go into the first half without conceding and the team could have done that with better individual performances. When you play badly and make mistakes you get punished. All goals in this game were punishments for mistakes, few chances created in this game before the 60th minute.

I wonder how this game would have played without the international fixtures.

 

[Ramshock]

I expect a strong response from a Mourinho team. I still have full confidence in him and the team but he just set it up wrong today. City are very very good lets give the plastics credit when its due.

 

[MDFC Manager]

Mourinho got his tactics wrong, but corrected it at half time. However, Pep was well prepared for that and got back in control straight away.


If only we'd made use of that 10 minute spell at the start of the second half..

 

[FreakyJim]

They have the better manager, sorry to say.

 

[krazyrobus]

I didn't understand the Lingard selection. He hadn't played in a month but you bring him on against city? That's ridiculous. I understood the Mkhi one and he brought us some decent moments along with a lot of possession lost. TBF, Rashford wasn't much better.

In the 1st half the team seemed awed by the occasion, I am not sure why, they lost most of the 50/50s and the goals they scored were a direct result of that sort of hesitation.

And unfortunately what was said in Feb with the appointment of Pep has come to pass, his tactics are years ahead of Mou, specially in the last 10 where it was hit high and hope. City dealt with that relatively comfortable.

 

[Dr. Funkenstein]

One of the worst referee performances outside of everything Mike Dean has ever done that I have seen. Twattenburg gave us absolutely nothing. A clear pen and red for Bravo on Rooney not given, freekicks in the double digits not given, while simultanously given for exactly the same situations for City.

Of course, another spineless referee in the PL, who would have expected that? But in the end it was United who benefitted the most.

Second half looked half decent, but City was quite satisfied with the lead and the first half was a tactical error from Mourinho, so we don't really know what the real difference in strength is.

 

[wr8_utd]

Really hurts to lose a derby but still proud of our performance. In previous seasons we would have just bent over and allowed them to pile further misery.

We hammered them 4-1 under LvG. I don't see the pride in the performance personally. Just lumping it forward when you have players with quality on the ball like Martial, Pogba and Rashford is embarrassing. We played route one football for 30 odd mins.

 

[Orange Tree]

Tactic in the first half was clearly wrong, not helped by Lindgard, Mkhi, and Rooney kept losing the ball casually.

 

[P-Nut]

Poor team selection from mou. Needed a pure dm in there to keep tabs on silva and De Bruyne runs and plenty of pace out wide to find zlatan in the box.

 

[Massive Spanner]

with bravo as their number 1, we'll finish above them.

Bravo is much better than this. First game in a new league is all.

 

[Kush]

Good God some of you need to get a grip, if FA read this thread they would already starting putting light blue ribbons on the PL title.

Pep outsmarted Mou with his tactics, our players looked clueless as how to play football with City's pressing. Playing a 2 man midfield of Fellaini and Pogba resulted in Silva and De Bruyne tearing through us at will. City players put one hell of a shift after International break while ours were looking jaded. Over the course of 90 mins they were deserved winners.

Having said that, it was a poor performance from us. Lingard and Mkhi were key today as entire gameplan hinged on them to counter and they kept losing the ball. Also really disappointed how weren't winning 1st ball or the 2nd ball for most the of match despite the height advantage. I swear for that last 30 mins City players were lobbing the ball into our half and their players were getting onto the end of it. Lots to takeaway from this game but it's premature to write us off. We'll improve, far too much quality not to.

 

[Powderfinger]

Fantastic game for the neutral.

I thought Pep's decision to take off Iheanacho so early (he should have taken off Sterling or Nolito if he wanted to go more defensive) was poor.

City were toothless on the counter in the second half because they didn't have a 9 running behind the defense. Silva would pick up the ball in threatening areas and have nobody to release through, instead always having to wait for later runs from KDB or to play down the wing, which isn't nearly as threatening.

United showed a lot of heart in the second half, as did City when hanging on. United were poor in the first half. Lingard and Mkhi were both quite bad but I still think United really misses a figure in midfield that can settle the game and help gain a foothold when the other team is rampant.

 

[Someone]

We deserved to lose, pep has imposed his game and we simply didn't. I don't know what jose had in mind for this game, but even in the second half when we had more of the ball we didn't have any solutions other than long balls in the box, and they didn't struggle with it as expected.

Most players didn't play well the first half, but i honestly don't know what pogba was doing, he was invisible most of the time and when he had the ball he always took too much time to pass it, at least other players has shown some aggression but he was just walking about.

 

[Sigma]

We should have had a penalty

 

[Rory 7]

No, he was poor, and I expect much better, because he's capable of much better, and that's what we'll get.

So I was told before we signed him. Today are the days where we need him at his best. As I said before we signed him, I've never seen him dominate a big game. And he certainly didn't do that today.

 

[Shark]

God Dayum the over reaction on here is a sight to behold. Great game of football, and it's clear to anyone with half a brain that there is feck all in it. We started shockingly and that decided the game quite simply. I do think that we need someone a bit better on the right. We had a good few chances go to waste because of it.

I seen a completely different picture, guess I only have half a brain. Oh well.

 

[AndyJ1985]

The better team won, simple as that We still have work to do. People were getting way ahead of themselves after beating Hull, Bournemouth, and Southampton. We still need a world class defender, #10, and CM to partner Pogba. We also need to see more of Rashford. We've lacked pace for so long now.

 

[RoadTrip]

Too many passengers in our team today. Mkhitaryan, Blind, and dare I say it Pogba.

Rooney wasn't amazing but not why we lost, will still get bashed though.

Ibrahimovic wasn't his best but then did he really get any service?

Fellaini whilst a nuisance in breaking play can't make a creative pass.

Our subs were good but ultimately Guardiola clearly has the tactical knowledge as he thwarted them almost straight away.

After this performance Herrera has to start for me.

And whilst I do like Bailly he can be a bit reckless at times.

But what I did like was that we did fight for it in the second half, something we haven't always seen in last few years.

 

[okLaptop1]

Good game. We didn't deserve to lose imo (looking at the whole game). We should have scored in the second half.

They had like 5 counter attacks in the second half where they were in acres of space in our half and they just weren't clinical enough. They deserved the win on balance, especially because of how dire our first half was.

 

[Akshay]

We lost because mourinho showed too much respect to them in the first half. Once we took the game to them we were clearly the better team. They defended well though so fair play.

Aye, they weren't that good at holding possession once we actually pressed them. We just stood off far too much in the first half. We also needed to put more pressure on Bravo in the first half. He started cocking up when we pressed him.

 

[kps88]

A few more of these matches against City? Or in general?

To be honest having just two players in midfield really hampered us and I'm hoping that was the learning experience for Mourinho.

The thing he does need to counter is the fact that Guardiola's team always has more possession and we got knackered after 60-70 minutes.

I was only half joking but against City of course. Bit like how he used Pepe there for Madrid in games against Barcelona.

Yeah beats me what we do when they have 70% of the ball and an early goal. We have to chase them or they'll just play it around the back all day.

 

[Kag]

They can outscore any team...As we have seen, they havent had a cleansheet in any game, yet they are unbeaten..

I think they can win the Kompany's quadruple finally this year. It was only a matter of time.

When I press post reply I hope I can see some white text.

 

[dannyrhinos89]

I'm not even particularly mad, I actually really enjoyed that game.

Draw would've been fair result but it's still early in the season with plenty of matches left.

I think we are easily the 2 best teams in the league.

 

[Theonas]

Hopefully this shows Jose that, with the squad he's got, lying deep and defending isn't going to cut it - we have to attack to be dangerous.

Attacking is not really just a matter of choice. If it was just a matter of deciding to fly at teams, Pellegrini's City or Wenger's teams would be winning doubles and trebles. Even Fergie could not go out and attacking against certain teams. That's why Pep has been the most sought after manager in the past decade. He is probably the best manager to get a team structured well enough to be able to attack and still be compact. Mourinho is either not good at that or can't even be bothered to work towards that approach. He is perfectly happy taking the short cut and playing a reactive game in the hope that over a season, he will get enough points. So no, he couldn't just go flying at City because you need to earn that right.

 

[DonDarmian]

The starting line-up was a miss. Good second half, should have grabbed a goal.

Micky looked way off. Rashford deserves a start.

Let's move on. GGMU

 

[Thiim]

Did City really have that much in the tank during games last year as well? What was it that was said about PEDs and Pep teams...

On a more serious note, for some reason the players weren't up for the game. City really weren't THAT great, it was more a combination of our players being clueless and without the ability to control anything and they having players who were capable of playing quick one-twos. We threw everything at them during the second half and with a bit more luck it would've been 2-2. Ibra had quite a few chances where you'd expect him to at least hit the target and should've scored the chance in the first half.

One thing is crystal clear: Rashford needs to start games.