Photo credit: Sports Vision
The original high-profile Manchester derby turned into a one-sided massacre in 45 minutes. Temhag's tactical deployment was a mistake, and United's 200 million euro reinforcements crumbled under Harland's onslaught.
(starting lineup)
For Manchester City, Rodrigo was out injured and the midfield was led by Gundogan, De Bruyne, B Silva, while United reintroduced Crowe and lined up Rashford, Anthony, Sancho in the forward line, with the key back position occupied by McTominay, Eriksen, and no Casemiro. Guardiola seemed a little nervous as he didn't seem to be familiar with United's new additions, including Lisandro Martinez, Macaracia, Anthony and others who were new faces. The addition of Casemiro on the bench, who was Real Madrid's starting defensive midfielder, may bring a new chemistry, but these uncertainties and Rodri's unavailability certainly puts pressure on Guardiola.
However, the game became tense and exciting from the start as United tried to counter City with quick counter-attacks, trying to block City attacks in defense and then passing the ball to Anthony or Rashford to start the onslaught. This strategy, although common, was taken very carefully by City, with Cancelo and Walker concentrating on the wing defense and hardly getting involved in the attack.
Theoretically, the lack of involvement of the wing-backs in the attack would reduce City's attacking power, but United's defense was just awful. Just 2:50 into the game, City launched a wave of consecutive attacks that resulted in three close calls, and although United managed to block them, it already panicked them, and the subsequent counterattacks looked more like an attempt to get the ball out of their own half as quickly as possible.
United's poor defense was not surprising as Makaracia is not a defensive defender and in fact Darlow is not very good at defending either, plus Lisandro Martinez is not big enough to move quickly enough and he likes to get out of his defensive position and often fails to notice the area he should be defending when he goes back to the defense, and now he is able to run straight back into his own defensive zone just fine. However, when City started to attack the outside of Makaracia, it was clear that Lisandro Martinez couldn't cover that area effectively as he only sprinted back to the right central area.
City were clearly concentrating on attacking Varane and then skimming past Lisandro Martinez. In the opening seven minutes, B Silva broke down the left and crossed for Foden to charge into the box, at which point Varane made an inexplicable backward step, giving up space in the box for Foden to fire in an easy shot from 10 yards to his left, a tricky angle to be sure, but mostly because of Varane's ill-advised backward step.
City deliberately ignored Lisandro Martinez's position in the first half, and I suspect Guardiola may not have known him well; it looked like he had a lot of range of movement and vicious defensive moves, so City attacked behind Varane exclusively. However, City also put Harland to go up against Lisandro Martinez, and the difference in height between the two is 194cm and 175cm, which just doesn't defend against any attacking advantage that relies on size, and with Makaracia on United's left side being 169cm tall, it was logical for Harland to attack that side of the pitch.
Manchester United completely mentally broke down after losing the ball, anxious to equalize the score, but the more anxious, the more chaotic, Manchester United soon became two backs standing in front of the defense area, get the ball directly after the rapid forward pass, but City's four defenders are not forward pressure, so most of the time there are only two people in the front at the first time to receive, and it is still Rashford and Anthony in the left and right flanks are very wide apart, coupled with the B Fei terrible form, Sancho is in the state of disappearance. This kind of defense and reaction can't break City's defense directly.
Rashford looked in terrible form but in reality he kept challenging Walker and even nearly knocked Walker off his feet, as evidenced by Walker later retiring with an injury in the 41st minute, Rashford was being deadlocked by Walker but he was putting a lot of pressure on the opposition, only to be followed up by Sancho who was also not much of a performer, and B Faye in the center who never really contributed much, which put Rashford in the predicament of being consumed by each other.
Photo credit: Sports Vision
By the 34th minute of the game, City had figured United out, and from a corner, Harland easily shrugged off Eriksen from the outside, circled around the 6-yard line to jump, and directly overpowered McTominay and Darlow to score the header. I think United have two defenders who are at a disadvantage when defending set-pieces, not being able to just get the full-backs to defend taller players and swapping stares, which definitely affects counter-attacks, and this one was a goal where McTominay and Darlow clearly didn't notice Harland had come in so didn't even fight it off.
Photo credit: Sports Vision
City then embarked on a storming 10-minute spell. 36:00 saw De Bruyne receive a pass on the right side of the field and launch a swift attack, which was too late for Lisandro Martinez at center-back to react to when De Bruyne suddenly struck a cross which skimmed over his head and looped around to the far post, where Haaland caught up with him from the back and scooted the ball home with his left foot.
