• With the game lost, with pride trampled beneath sky blue feet and all hope gone, Solskjaer sent on Anthony Martial and Alexis Sanchez.
• As a symbol of a directionless, ailing football club, it was pretty appropriate.
Image: /Reuters
If anything summed up the modern Manchester United, it was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s final act of the night, a double substitution with seven minutes to go. With the game lost, with pride trampled beneath sky blue feet and all hope gone, Solskjaer sent on Anthony Martial and Alexis Sanchez.
One forward cost in the region of £55m to buy, the other the best part of £2m-a-month to pay. Martial an unknown bought above the heads of the scouting department. Sanchez bought just because he was prepared to say no to Manchester City.
Here, as City prepared to walk out of Old Trafford with one foot over the finishing line of the Premier League title race, Martial and Sanchez walked on to the field with absolutely nothing to offer and no time left to offer it. As a symbol of a directionless, ailing football club, it was pretty appropriate.
By that time, one of City’s own substitutes had sealed the game. Leroy Sane is a young German bought as a work in progress. He has not played as much as he would like recently but here his impact was devastating. By contrast, the only devastation wrought by any of United’s modern signings has been on the club’s balance sheet.
Before Martial and Sanchez had arrived from the sidelines, for example, Romelu Lukaku had also done so. He cost about £90m two summers ago and was bought from the club who beat United 4-0 at the weekend, Everton. So the pattern here is not hard to detect and the reasons that United continue to splash about in the shallows are clear. Their players are largely not good enough and it is this that will undermine Solskjaer as he tries to move his club forwards now.
The defeat was only by two and for a part of the first half, United were competitive. They played with some energy and we have not always said that. But once again the chasm between the two Manchester clubs was obvious and there are some other statistics that tell us much about that.
United had one shot on target and it was hard to recall it. At Everton on Sunday, they also had one. Against Barcelona two weeks ago they had none.
They recently scraped past West Ham with two penalties and it is now 527 minutes since they scored from open play. So as they sang for Solskjaer here before kick-off and again in the second half it was easy to understand why. At Old Trafford what else is there to sing for? They have no heroes left on the field and the only one hope as they limp towards the season’s end is that Solskjaer grows in to something quite unexpectedly special.
Beneath him at United are foundations that have crumbled. Solskjaer prefaced this derby by taking his players to the club’s old training ground. It was a nice idea but probably the wrong one. Gone are the days when players like Patrice Evra would watch documentaries about the Munich disaster. History means little to the modern footballer and United is a football club that desperately needs to look forwards rather than backwards anyway.
Here on derby day United at least had the opportunity to be relevant again, if only for one evening. It has been six years since they contested a title race but here they could have their say in someone else’s war if only they could find a strong enough voice.
With much at stake, the storm that passed through Manchester two hours before kick-off seemed indicative of what we hoped would follow, particularly given the pre-match exchange between Pep Guardiola and Solskjaer regarding allegations of City’s ‘tactical fouls’.
Interestingly, former United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was heard privately on Monday expressing identical sentiments to those outlined by Solskjaer a day later. The two men are close. Had Ferguson had a word in his former player’s ear about the subject? We shall make our own minds up about that.
Whatever the details and the motivations of that issue, United had to echo the strength of their current manager’s assertions on the field if they were to have any chance at all against a team so technically and physically superior.
Too often against good teams in the modern era, United have been passive and then — usually when too late — hopelessly reactive. Here at least Solskjaer’s team were on the front foot and playing with purpose in the early stages. City looked skittish at the back at times, if only by their own high standards.
So it was a contest at least but all the while the feeling lingered that it would only remain so until City scored - and City always score.
The back end of the first half felt telling. United’s own storm — such as it had been — appeared to have blown itself out and City’s players emerged in to the open playing some better, more progressive football that soon felt too good for their opponents to handle.
The goals that won it looked simple but told us much. City fast and slick and punchy. United slow and vulnerable and prone to self-harm. David de Gea, a player whose regression sums up the United malaise more than any other, may have saved the first and should have saved the second. De Gea has watched his football club burn slowly in the post-Ferguson years. It’s a miracle he is still here.
When he looks at Solskjaer he must see a brave man doing his best but he must also wonder just how long it will be before he disappears down the same black hole as all the others.