WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Another sunny day in Manchester, (does it ever rain there?), saw Huddersfield Town donning the shorts and the suntan lotion in another attempt to try and stop Manchester City scoring and, consequently, taking all three points from the game.

This, apparently, is something they have managed to do on the four occasions they have met since City won 10-1 at Maine Road back in 1987. On that day David White, Paul Stewart and Tony Adcock all scored hat-tricks whilst Neil MacNab scored the other goal and the three main men were at today’s game as guests of City.

The match started as it was always going to start and continued as it was always going to continue with City shading the possession 80-20 and, in truth, we didn’t really see how the statisticians had managed to find that much of the ball for Huddersfield.

Anyway, having played out from the back on numerous occasions Ederson went long in the 25th minute, finding Sergio Agüero on the edge of the box. After a couple of neat turns which completely bamboozled the one Town defender who was trying to mark him and the goalkeeper he then lobbed the ball into the top corner. 1-0 for City and, at this stage, possession stats had changed to 91-9 in favour of guess who?

After half an hour it was 2-0 when Gabriel Jesus scored with a low shot and Huddersfield’s defensive plan was looking about as successful as that of the 1987 team!

After 36 minutes Agüero added his second and City’s third before Huddersfield actually pulled a goal back when John Stones fell asleep at a long throw and Stanković nipped in front of him to score. So half-time and it was 3-1 to City.

It didn’t take long for normal service to be resumed in the second half as David Silva floated a free-kick over the Huddersfied wall and into the top corner for 4-1 but the fifth took a while to arrive. In fact it wasn’t until the 74th minute when Sergio Agüero completed the 13th hat-trick of his City career, turning in a cross from Benjamin Mendy.

How many hat-tricks would this guy have scored if he wasn’t continually substituted around the 70-minute mark, usually having scored a couple of goals?

Anyway, City weren’t finished yet and Leroy Sané managed to assist an own goal when his shot came back off the goalkeeper only to be swept into the net by Kongolo.

6-1 with three for Agüero and all he now had to do was answer some totally stupid questions from a totally stupid Sky TV employee.

So a good day was had by the blue side, now what about the reds?

On the south coast…..

They arrived in Brighton without Alexis Sánchez who, according to José Mourinho, had picked up a slight injury. This gave Anthony Martial the chance to impress for the first time this season.

The game kicked off and was a cagey affair for the first twenty minutes although Romelu Lukaku had a decent chance to score but pulled his shot amateurishly wide.

Then Brighton took over and, thanks to some woeful defending by United, scored two fairly quick goals.

Firstly Glen Murray got in front of Lindelof and flicked a cross past De Gea for the first goal. Then, after a little pinball in the United penalty area, the ball ricocheted to Shane Duffy who prodded it past the keeper for number two.

Romeleu Lukaku made amends for his earlier miss by, briefly, getting Manchester United back in the game with a header from two yards out but the two-goal lead was restored when Eric Bailly, who had been culpable in the concession of the first goal, made a stupid tackle in the area and Brighton scored from the resulting penalty.

Half-time 3-1 to Brighton.

The only positive thing that can be said about the second-half is that, from a Manchester United point of view, it was slightly less pathetic than the first. At least they didn’t concede another goal but, on the flip side, they never looked like scoring until they were awarded a penalty in the 94th minute which Pogba converted.

So a 3-2 loss to a team who had been beaten by Watford the previous week and, based on this performance, United will be lucky to finish in the top half, never mind the top four.