You can’t hit what you can’t see. On a mild but riotous night at Old Trafford, Manchester City served up a beating as swaggering and dominant as any they have managed at this ground. In front of the grandees of Red Manchester – Wayne Rooney, Sir Alex Ferguson, Ryan Giggs – City executed a coup de grace borne of pure disrespect, United taking the best part of an hour to work out just what, exactly, was going on out there.
What had happened was that City had simply disappeared from view, slipped into the cracks, eluded detection. Had Raheem Sterling been a little more clinical in front of goal, the scoreline might even have been embarrassing. United’s Plan A, meanwhile, foundered against a fluid, kaleidoscopic City side who moved the ball forwards with seamless, almost ghostly speed. It’s hard to play on the counter-attack, after all, if there’s nothing to counter.
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