The game was 18 seconds old when Erling Haaland, with a flash of his left boot, sent the ball centimetres past Altay Bayindir’s far post. The Etihad offered up a guttural roar of approval at Manchester City’s unusually vigorous up and at ‘em start.
Back to front, rough and tumble. Not very City, not very Pep Guardiola but then – as club sources said in the hours before derby victory, an emotional derby after Ricky Hatton’s passing – everything had been poured into this. Everything and more. An unusual amount with an overwhelming and rare feeling of ‘must not lose’.
Guardiola had appeared like a man accepting of his lot down in Brighton a fortnight ago, wearing a look of resignation at what was unfolding, City cut open at will and without answers in possession. A bit slow, somewhat stodgy, then porous at the back.
Although a little bit more chilled in older age, City’s manager has always been somebody who stews and that will not change. But he managed to travel away, going off to Wentworth for the BMW PGA Championship on Tuesday, walking a practice round with Tommy Fleetwood and watching Tyrell Hatton. He’d been at the US Open final for Carlos Alcarez’s Grand Slam title in New York.
Enjoying but plotting, you imagine – and he’d obviously given how to attack the days leading up to Manchester United’s arrival some serious thought. City never train at the Etihad the day before a game. Never, ever – it was a Manuel Pellegrini trait, not Guardiola. Yet they did just that on Saturday. Some at the club have suggested that was down to the official squad photograph being taken but that is normally done over the road at the training ground anyway. An unusual move.
The City bus broke through the throng of supporters along Ashton New Road and parked up outside the Colin Bell Stand at just before 2:40pm, around half an hour earlier than normal. An unusual move.
These are things done by a manager to change the routine, to disturb the norm around a group who were or are in a funk. And it may have helped produce a high-octane performance, the sort which saw two-goal Erling Haaland throwing himself at crosses pumped into City’s box, not just United’s. Things were so quick that there felt a deep irony in Guardiola imploring Bernardo Silva to calm down as he spurned a counter attack opportunity.
City were at 100mph for much of this, feeding into the idea that given recent circumstances – and with Arsenal to come next week, four defeats from five to begin the season no longer unthinkable – this derby took on that bit of extra importance. They simply couldn’t have gone to the Emirates on Sunday having won just one of four.
Going on an unusual lap of appreciation with his players at the end of the afternoon, Guardiola then made a point of talking up ‘unbelievable’ body language of the team and the ‘spirit’.
Phil Foden, whose header can act as a catalyst for an upward trajectory in his form, offered that the international break had come at a decent time.
‘It will have done a world of good,’ Foden said, before tellingly adding: ‘Today has been a big build up. What I like is that we mixed it up. Maybe in the past we have not done that.’
So half of Guardiola’s job surrounded the intangibles. The other half came tactically – and what the Catalan has done over recent days again indicates how much has been chucked into this one game to halt another slump.
On Thursday, Gianluigi Donnarumma’s first day with the team, Guardiola was holed up in his office instead of taking training. He left that to the backroom staff, instead devising how the squad would set up during Saturday’s key tactical session, the walkthrough.
Twenty-four hours later, an overly apologetic Guardiola walked into City’s training ground auditorium 24 minutes late for the weekly press conference because a meeting with staff had run on. And on. And on.
It was all about United, about Ruben Amorim – who took four points off City last year. Guardiola knew the centre of the pitch marked United’s true area of fragility and had worked on a diamond in midfield during training. Rodri sitting, Foden in the No 10.
They ended up beginning with a parallelogram in midfield, four in a box of sorts, to overload the area early on, before settling into a more conventional formation. Yet it was designed to allow Jeremy Doku to flourish in space, operating more centrally, and the unpredictable Belgian repaid the faith and backed up the tweak with two assists. His roaming caused all manner of problems and Doku often pushed up alongside Haaland.
City could have scored six. Even though there remains significant room for improvement, and Guardiola’s gentle scratching of his head in annoyance as the defenders hurriedly hoofed clear late on tells all in that regard, the manager must hope the tunnel vision in manufacturing any sort of victory in this derby can kickstart their campaign.