WHY SAY ANYTHING?

The most important lesson from this season, not just this game, is that neither of the two clubs actually defend as well as they think they can.

Manchester City are used to having so much possession that they rarely need to defend, when they do need to defend they are not very good at it.

Manchester United have the best goalkeeper in the world who has been their player of the year for the last few seasons. If United’s defence was any good then their goalkeeper wouldn’t continually win this award.

So knowing that the two defences are a lot more dodgy than people would have us believe we sat down to watch the game expecting goals at both ends.

After twenty or so minutes, during which time the two teams mainly cancelled each other out, United began to make mistakes and, after City had taken a two goal lead into the interval, our prediction for goals at both ends was looking good. The problem was that it appeared that they would all be scored by City.

United, however, came out in a far more determined and resilient mood and soon had the scores level at 2-2 thanks to Paul Pogba. Then, when Chris Smalling scored the third, City’s dream of winning the title against United evaporated, (can dreams evaporate?)

Not only that but they also cannot now win the title if they beat Tottenham next week so they will have to wait a while longer.

Oh, and by the way, all the goals ended up being scored at ONE end!

So what else did we already know?

Well, we knew that City were going to leave some of their best players on the bench so that they won’t be too tired to score four goals, or more, against Liverpool on Tuesday.

We also knew that the players selected should have been good enough to beat United over 90 minutes, not just 45.

With United, we knew that their two ancient wingers who are mistakenly being played as full backs because somebody, somewhere, thought it was a good idea would not be able to cope with City’s wide players.

We also knew that the donkey Chris Smalling would make a mistake as he nearly always does. In this case he allowed Vincent Kompany a free header for City’s first goal.

We knew that Lukaku wouldn’t win as many of the long balls punted straight down the middle as a player of his height and build should do. We also knew that his close control is pretty poor and that he shouldn’t be involved in intricate little passing movements as they invariably end with him losing possession.

What continues to keep us in a state of surprise is the fact that José Mourinho, who must also know all of these facts, appears to ignore them and then expects the supporters to believe all of the excuses he comes up with when losing. Remember the Sevilla game at Old Trafford?

After this derby game he was positively gushing in his praise for his players and the way they had turned things around. In truth, it had been a praiseworthy second-half performance and he was right to point out the differences between that and the first-half.

Where he wasn’t right was with his supercilious claptrap about the team being better than everybody thinks and him being a better manager than everybody thinks.

For a start, over the course of the season, the team hasn’t been better than City and, if they want to win the Premier League, that is the benchmark, irrespective of what people think!

He himself won three trophies last season. This season he may win the FA Cup but, if he does, that’s it! It’s fine to say they have improved in the league because they have more points than last season but last season the Premier League was sacrificed well before the end so that the team could concentrate on winning the Europa League.

So when next season starts, Manchester United will begin in exactly the same position as they did this season. They will have qualified for the Champion’s League. That doesn’t strike us as being an improvement, it seems like the club has stood still! In fact, trophy hunters might even suggest that United have gone backwards, but that isn’t true.

The fact is that they need to be starting the 2019/20 season as the reigning champions of either the Premier League or Europe or both.

That will be considered an improvement, anything less will just be more excuses for failure.