Manchester United v Manchester City: The derby moment which revealed massive gap between two rivals

More than a year after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took the reins, his United still fall horribly below that bar

(Getty)

Around an hour into this Manchester derby, Carlos Planchart – one of Pep Guardiola’s trusted analysts, sitting with a laptop nearby the press seats at Old Trafford – pounded the desk in front of him in anger.

Planchart had just witnessed Manchester City’s midfield fail to win and control possession midway through their own half, allowing Fred to take the ball and attempt to break forward. The attack was quickly snuffed out. Manchester City were still leading 3-0 but the analyst’s disappointment was palpable. It was a greater show of frustration than any Manchester United staff member had managed all evening.

It can be easy to read too much into small things, to use isolated moments like these to justify grand and inaccurate theories, but the fact that a City employee could be so demanding of their players felt significant on a week where Ole Gunnar Solskjaer chose to talk about standards. “We know they’re a top team,” he had said of City. “I admire Pep’s team. They’ve raised the bar so much. The standards they’ve set are something to aim for.” And yet, more than a year after Solskjaer took the reins, his United still fall horribly below that bar.

Yes, this was not the mauling it could have been. United improved as the evening went on in that they were not sliced open so easily. Marcus Rashford even reduced the arrears to ease the embarrassment, but this is still a Carabao Cup semi-final which has likely been decided in one leg.

And it is a night that will be remembered for a truly abysmal 20-minute spell from United’s perspective, when City cut through their neighbours without mercy or hesitation. At that point, any scoreline seemed possible.

There was little point criticising any United player for the first, a breath-taking hit by Bernardo Silva. Yet the two goals which followed and that will probably settle this semi-final were entirely preventable, born of United’s failings rather than City’s brilliance, and symbolic of their stasis under Solskjaer.

Many at the start of the night had predicted a United victory, given how their compact and disciplined counter-attacking approach had reaped rewards in exhilarating fashion at the Etihad last month. Yet United lacked that same organisation when it counted.

Victor Lindelof is yet to find the consistency he showed last season and was badly at fault for the second, straying out of position to attack a high and hanging ball but only heading it into the path of Bernardo. By wandering up-field, he had not only left a gap for Bernardo to play an inch-perfect through ball but had strayed too far to cut the pass out. Riyad Mahrez was the happy recipient, and rounded a slow and cumbersome David de Gea for the second.

The third was worse still. There was not a single United player in their own half when City’s counter-attack began, but even that should not excuse the defending which followed. With the central defence stranded, only Brandon Williams was quick enough to catch a breaking Mahrez yet his sliding tackle played the ball into Kevin de Bruyne’s feet. One telegraphed side-step was enough to sit Phil Jones down and just as the De Bruyne’s finish appeared short of crossing the goal-line, Andreas Pereira inadvertently helped it over.

City had scored only one goal fewer in the first half of their Carabao Cup semi-final against third-tier Burton Albion this time last year. That game finished 9-0. United were spared that scale of defeat but this was arguably a greater embarrassment. The balance of power in this city tilted in the other direction long ago – perhaps when Roberto Mancini’s City ran away with 6-1 win at Old Trafford in 2011 – but the gulf has rarely felt as wide as it did in those final minutes of the first half.

When the draw was made, Solskjaer claimed that United could not play in the same way as at the Etihad last month and expect to get a result. Yet that is exactly what they did, such is the poverty of ideas and thinking in the Old Trafford dugout. Perhaps Guardiola is setting new standards, but United are either incapable or unwilling to learn from what City and now Liverpool do.

A few moments after Planchart had pounded his desk, Solskjaer finally decided he had seen enough. For the first time during the second half, he got out of his seat and attempted to fix things from the touchline. He began to look as exacting and demanding as a United manager should be. It was too late. This tie has surely already been won.