Pep Guardiola’s Premier League champions took their game to a whole new level in the 6-3 trashing of their city neighbours“Yeah, not bad.” With 44 minutes gone at the Etihad Stadium Manchester City scored a goal that brought the usual cheers and roars, but also something else, the urge to laugh. City had already spent the first half playing football that seemed to have befitted from an operating system upgrade, demonstrating the latest miracle processor against a batch of red-shirted patsies.The move to make it 4-0 was a moment of super-compression, lines cut in a perfect zig-zag from outside City’s penalty area to the far left-hand corner of the Manchester United goal without friction or drag or loss of scale....
They faced very different tasks on arriving in Manchester but both were quick to make tough calls to improve their teamsTwo bald men with gimlet stares. Two coaches united by a Cruyffian vision of football and trying to impose it in a foreign land. But as Sunday’s Manchester derby approaches, it doesn’t feel as though Pep Guardiola and Erik ten Hag have that much in common.Ten Hag’s star is rising. After his successes at Ajax, only now are his ideas reaching a truly global public and being tested at the highest level. Guardiola is the old master, with 10 championships in the big five leagues to his name. His philosophy is not merely well-known but has shaped the modern game...
City and United grab the attention but Bury and Macclesfield have gone under although Stockport are thinking big Greater Manchester on derby day feels like a place on the cusp of a great awakening. All morning the trains pull into Piccadilly and Oxford Road, spitting their cargo on to the streets. The pubs begin to swell and heave. Everyone seems to have somewhere to be, even the people who don’t. And then the great gathering flood: a wave of red and blue washing through the city, powered along by songs, San Miguel and a skittish nervous energy, picking a careful detour around the half-and-half scarf sellers. For a few restless hours, this city feels like the very centre of the...
The Norwegian’s influence sometimes looked lacking against Dortmund but his patience again proved devastatingErling Haaland poses the professional writer a problem. Most of the time, he doesn’t do very much. He jogs towards the ball. He jogs away from the ball. He prowls and waits.He had a grand total of 26 touches, which is quite a lot by his standards, but still comfortably fewer than both goalkeepers. And so discussing Haaland’s influence becomes something of an unsatisfying binary, pivoting around a single volatile question: did he score or not? If he did, his contribution is likely to have been decisive. If not, then you’ve spent 90 minutes watching a tall blonde man look at things. Continue reading...
Newcastle and Manchester City entertained in a six-goal draw but the club’s owners and history will not be forgottenPep Guardiola was agitated. He stalked the touchline, hands on hips, brooding. He gestured at Bernardo Silva and, during a break for an injury, gave him lengthy instructions. Manchester City were 1-0 up and creating chances, but Guardiola often serves as his own canary in the mine, his agitation indicating long before it becomes apparent in concrete actions that something was amiss.When Ilkay Gündogan put City ahead in the fifth minute, the assumption was that Eddie Howe was on his way to a 11th defeat in 11 games against Guardiola. Everybody knows the drill: Guardiola praises Howe for the football his side...