Ruben Amorim has offered Rashford and Garnacho a route back into the side. “New week, new life,” he said. “If they train well, they will compete for a place in the team.” And on that happy not, I’m off. Bye!
Bernardo Silva: "In the last minute we played like the under-15s and we paid the price
I’m going to leave you with this, from Bernardo Silva. Bye!
We totally deserved what happened. If it’s 10 games it’s not about luck. If you look at the game my feeling was there was only one team that could win, but in the end we lost. We have to look at ourselves. It’s not about, ‘We’re playing well and it’s a bit unlucky.’ It’s the decisions you make. Today in the last minute we played like the under-15s and we paid the price.
It’s frustrating. From a corner for Manchester City, when you even leave a centre-back at the back, you end up with the ball with our keeper and there’s no excuse at this level. There’s no excuse for what happened. It’s not just that pass to the keeper, it’s from the corner for us to having to play to the keeper. It cannot happen. We have to do better in these situations. At this level if you make these kind of mistakes you deserve to lose the game. We just have to do better.
Updated
And here’s David Hytner’s match report, no doubt completely rewritten in a manic final few minutes. Won’t somebody think of the journalists?
When Ruben Amorim oversaw his previous victory over Manchester City – with his old club Sporting in the Champions League – it was to push the reigning Premier League champions towards crisis. That was in early November and it was City’s third defeat on the spin.
As Amorim repeated the trick here, it was to pep up his new project at Manchester United and leave Pep Guardiola on his knees. There seems no way out of the misery for the City manager, this an eighth defeat in 11 matches in all competitions, the decline of his all-conquering team stark and extraordinary.
For so long, it had looked as though City would close out a much-needed victory thanks to Josko Gvardiol’s first-half header. They had played meekly but United had no cutting edge. They were powder-puff in the final third. And then, at the very end, they were not and they could embrace a result which Amorim will try to use as a catalyst.
Much more here:
If you missed all the excitement in the Scottish League Cup final, Ewan Murray’s got you covered.
xG suggests it was the fairest of results. According to the same account, from open play City’s xG was just 0.29.
Man City (0.99) 1-2 (2.18) Man Utd
— The xG Philosophy (@xGPhilosophy) December 15, 2024
For the second week in a row City haven’t won, Arsenal haven’t won and Liverpool haven’t won. Chelsea are about to host Brentford, who have one away point to their names this season, and a win would take them within two points of the leaders, and seven clear of City.
An eighth defeat in 11 in all competitions for Manchester City. Remarkable. They were poor here, their goal was lucky – well taken, but entirely reliant on a massively deflected “cross” – and they created almost nothing beyond that, and did not have a single shot on target in the second half. United were not much better, and it’s hard to argue that they deserved to win, but they certainly didn’t deserve to lose. Amad Diallo was frustrating at times but he was involved in almost all of United’s best moments, including the two in about 180 seconds that turned the game around.
Updated
The league table this evening looks like this:
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liverpool | 15 | 18 | 36 |
| 2 | Chelsea | 15 | 17 | 31 |
| 3 | Arsenal | 16 | 14 | 30 |
| 4 | Nottm Forest | 16 | 2 | 28 |
| 5 | Man City | 16 | 5 | 27 |
| 6 | Aston Villa | 16 | -1 | 25 |
| 7 | AFC Bournemouth | 15 | 3 | 24 |
| 8 | Fulham | 16 | 2 | 24 |
| 9 | Brighton | 16 | 1 | 24 |
| 10 | Brentford | 15 | 3 | 23 |
| 11 | Newcastle | 16 | 2 | 23 |
| 12 | Man Utd | 16 | 2 | 22 |
| 13 | Tottenham Hotspur | 15 | 12 | 20 |
| 14 | West Ham | 15 | -8 | 18 |
| 15 | Crystal Palace | 16 | -4 | 16 |
| 16 | Everton | 15 | -7 | 15 |
| 17 | Leicester | 16 | -13 | 14 |
| 18 | Ipswich | 16 | -12 | 12 |
| 19 | Wolverhampton | 16 | -16 | 9 |
| 20 | Southampton | 15 | -20 | 5 |
Final score: Manchester City 1-2 Manchester United
90+6 mins: Zirkzee intercepts a pass, runs downfield, protects the ball, and wastes the last few seconds of the game. It’s all over!
90+5 mins: Then Walker boots a hopeful, hopeless long ball into the arms of Onana.
90+5 mins: But Grealish can’t beat the first man, and it’s headed away.
90+5 mins: Now it’s all about manic defensive effort for United. Lindelof concedes a corner.
90+4 mins: Sky timed the gap between City kicking off after the equaliser and them conceding another at 54 seconds.
90+2 mins: And in the middle of all that Amad has gone off, Victor Lindelof has come on, and the fourth official has signalled five minutes of stoppage time.
90+1 mins: It’s a long ball forward from Martinez, beautifully weighted to tempt Ederson forward while allowing Amad to reach it first. His first touch takes it away from the keeper, and he then sends in a shot from an acute angle that runs just behind the sprinting Josko Gvardiol, somehow avoiding his legs, on its way in at the far post!
GOAL! Manchester City 1-2 Manchester United (Amad, 90 mins)
United have turned the game on its head in a matter of seconds! Amad Diallo has only gone and put them into the lead!
Updated
GOAL! Manchester City 1-1 Manchester United (Fernandes, 88 mins)
… but he gets this right! Ederson goes the wrong way as Fernandes sidefoots to his right, and United are deservedly level!
Updated
87 mins: Bruno Fernandes, who has had a poor game by his standards, puts the ball on the spot…
Penalty to Manchester United!
86 mins: A catalogue of chaos from City! Nunes’s back-pass is too weak and Amad steals it before Ederson can get there. Nunes rushes back to make amends, but succeeds only in bringing Amad down inside the area, and that is a penalty!
Updated
84 mins: United needlessly concede a corner, which given their corner-concession statistics is inadvisable. This one, though, is headed clear.
84 mins: Good pressure from United, but at the end of it Mainoo heads Martinez’s cross way over the bar from around the penalty spot.
81 mins: Nice interplay on the right between Antony and Amad, who runs to the byline and tries a pull-back which deflects to Fernandes, who absent-mindedly kicks it straight out of play, as if he forgot where he was and what he was doing, but was pretty sure he didn’t want that round yellow thing bothering him.
78 mins: A triple substitution for United: Joshua Zirkzee replaces Hojland, Antony comes on for Mazraoui, and Leny Yoro replaces De Ligt.
77 mins: The ball rolls to Haaland inside the penalty area, his first shooting chance of the day. Martinez gets in the way of the shot, and it loops wide for a corner. Before it’s taken, Jack Grealish comes on for Doku.
74 mins: What a chance! And what a miss! Hojland plays the ball through for Bruno Fernandes, run and pass in perfect synchronicity. The Portuguese looks up, sees Ederson onrushing, and chips over him and … beyond the far post!
73 mins: “If there’s nothing worth watching at the Etihad for now, check out what’s happening north o’the border,” suggests Jeremy Boyce. “Celtic 3 - 3 Rangers, 10 yellow cards so far, missiles launched at the polis (who would have thought ?), proper derby, know what I mean?” Only a couple of minutes of extra time to play there in the League Cup final.
70 mins: Doku gets to the byline and sends in a cross which is fractionally too high for Haaland.
69 mins: Amad is looking lively, and much less offside, on the right for United. Gary Neville on Sky is certainly a fan. United could do with someone on the left to balance that width.
68 mins: De Bruyne goes off, signing off with a rising drive from 23 yards or so that rises well over the bar. Kovacic is on.
67 mins: Mateo Kovacic is about to come on for City.
65 mins: Looking back at that challenge, it is impossible to see how that wasn’t a foul on Hojland by Dias. Stuart Attwell, today’s VAR, quickly decides he doesn’t need to get involved.
64 mins: Now Hojland goes down in the penalty area, after Dias throws a leg across him in an attempt to get the ball. The referee gives a goal kick.
Updated
62 mins: Save! Amad’s header looked to be heading towards the post rather than the net, but Ederson makes sure. A good cross from Fernandes that time.
61 mins: Quite a lot of not a lot happening currently, which I suppose is fine from City’s point of view. “I guess there may be something the wider world doesn’t know about happening behind the scenes, but to deliberately leave out two attacking players who offer pace and the ability to beat opponents as well as a dozen goals between them this season against a City side struggling to cope with pace just seems plain weird,” writes Rick Harris. There’s a story to be told here, for sure.
59 mins: There has not been a massive qualitative improvement since half-time.
55 mins: Patient build-up on the right from United, and then Fernandes spoils it by biffing a ludicrous cross out of play.
54 mins: Anthony Taylor is giving too many free-kicks. Blowing whistles is fun and everything but let it flow, man.
53 mins: After a period of City pressure United win a free-kick, and Fernandes immediately gifts the ball back to them.
51 mins: Bernardo Silva beautifully nutmegs Diogo Dalot. Lovely stuff.
47 mins: United start on the front foot, but again they’re caught offside. Emails continue to arrive about Kyle Walker’s terrible head issue shortly before half-time.
“It would seem to be a very easy rule that anybody who simulates like Walker did should receive at least the punishment that they were trying to trick the ref into giving the other player,” suggests Adam. “So if you pretend someone headbutted you and fling yourself to the floor like a prat, off you go and have some time in the stands to think about what you’ve done.” It’s not a terrible idea. I’m always surprised that we don’t see more double-yellow cards – for example, Walker might have been booked for the foul on Hojland, and booked again for the aggression that followed it. The first booking might have been harsh, but if I were a referee I would have really enjoyed brandishing it.
46 mins: Peeeeeep! The game is back under way.
Updated
City finally join them on the pitch. “Let’s hope Kyle Walker got some half-time treatment for that badly brushed eyebrow,” writes Justin Kavanagh. “Get well soon, tough guy!”
United are back out, well before City.
This statistic is astonishing and damning. Manchester United might not have conceded the most goals from corners in the Premier League, but for Wolves (who’ve let in nine) it’s only 22.5% of their total, and while they have conceded 123 corners so far this season United, before today, had only conceded 70.
42% of the goals Manchester United have conceded in the Premier League this season have been from corners (8/19) 🤯 pic.twitter.com/Oc3D81MjA5
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) December 15, 2024
It has been, in truth, a poor half of football. Or a perfectly good half of poor football. One of the two. The goal owed a fair amount to luck, De Bruyne pretty much blasting the ball into the nearest defender and the deflection turning it into a masterful inch-perfect spinning wondercross, but Gvardiol’s header was very good. There is hope here for United, but if Amad Diallo is going to be the one making the key runs beyond the home defence he needs to time them better.
Updated
Half time: Manchester City 1-0 Manchester United
45+5 mins: The corner is taken short again, and returned to De Bruyne again. This time he’s fouled and the referee allows him to take, and waste, the free kick before blowing for half-time.
Updated
45+4 mins: From that free-kick, United mess up their attempt to play their way out from the goal kick and City end up with two minutes of possession and pressure, ending with Foden’s shot being deflected, and then saved. Corner.
46+2 mins: De Bruyne wins a free-kick on the right, pretty much on the spot where he took that shot a few minutes ago. He takes it, and sends it straight into touch.
45+1 mins: There’ll be four minutes of first-half stoppage time, or thereabouts.
44 mins: Amad Diallo is perpetually offside. The concept of holding his run seems entirely foreign to him. He’s caught offside again.
43 mins: Dalot’s back-pass forces Onana to come out wide of his area to prevent a corner. He then passes to Maguire, who isn’t really ready for it, whose blind pass goes straight to De Bruyne. Onana by this stage is running back to his goal, and De Bruyne’s first-time 40-yarder from the right touchline goes straight to him.
40 mins: The free kick is swung into the area, and seems to come off Mainoo and run behind. The refereed gives United a corner.
39 mins: Walker fouls Hojland, who leaps up and returns to confront him. The two players put their foreheads together, contact which ends with Walker flinging himself to the ground. It’s pretty shameful from Walker, and the referee isn’t fooled. Both players are booked.
Updated
38 mins: Now Kyle Walker is on the ground, the crowd is baying, and all 22 players run to join in with some handbags.
GOAL! Manchester City 1-0 Manchester United (Gvardiol, 37 mins)
The home side open the scoring! It’s a corner, played short to Bernardo Silva and then returned to De Bruyne, whose cross deflects off Diallo and spins and dips onto the head of Gvardiol, whose header from six yards loops beyond Onana.
Updated
35 mins: Fernandes tackles Bernardo Silva from behind again, on the halfway line. This time he doesn’t get the ball, and City get a free kick.
31 mins: Ederson keeps the ball for a while, and then pumps it downfield, over the head of Haaland and into the hands of his opposite number. “Greetings from Oregon USA,” writes Chris Amirault. “I know City critics emphasize the team has gotten slower on their feet — Kyle Walker being the prime example. But don’t they seem far less speedy in their decision-making? They used to zip it around like prime Barca as recently as last year, and now they consistently seem to take an extra second on the ball. A case of brain fatigue, or just the loss of confidence?” But to play that game you need multiple players with the combination of technique and speed of thought required to play that style – how often have they been able to play De Bruyne, Foden and Bernado Silva in the same team this season? (It’s a genuine question, I entirely missed the month of October, and a good chunk of November, but my sense is not often.)
29 mins: Bernardo Silva dribbles into the area and looks certain to end his run with a shot on goal, but Bruno Fernandes slides in from behind with a challenge that had to be perfect and very much was.
27 mins: The most remarkable thing about the fact Rashford is not involved here is that United would really benefit from having a player with precisely his characteristics (but fully motivated and in form), against a side that look weak on their flanks and is fragile against pace on the counter.
26 mins: Chance! Um, kind of! Ugarte prods the ball through to Diallo, who runs clear into the area, but he a) shoots wide and b) is offside.
Updated
23 mins: De Bruyne to Haaland to Foden, who sways this way and that before taking a shot that deflects wide. Dias heads over at the near post from the corner; at the back post Hojland’s attempt to mark Haaland involves a full bear hug.
22 mins: A good chance for United to create something, but Diallo’s pass to Hojland has way too much pace and can’t be controlled.
21 mins: Which ends with the first shot of the game, a left-footed half-volley from Foden that is firmly struck but goes a yard wide.
Updated
20 mins: Whistles from the crowd as United keep the ball, and pass it around the left-hand corner of City’s penalty area. Then cheers when they give it away, and a crossfield pass to Nunes allows them to break.
17 mins: Mazraoui plays Mainoo into trouble on the edge of United’s penalty area, but City can’t take advantage.
14 mins: Kobbie Mainoo comes on. Mount has played around 17% of United’s Premier League minutes this season, and assuming that’s a minor muscle injury – he walks off the pitch unaided and without apparent physical agony – it’ll be a few weeks before he plays any more.
13 mins: Mason Mount’s game is over. It’s not a contact injury, he just goes down off the ball and the camera finds him sitting there, looking absolutely gutted.
11 mins: Amad Diallo is played into space down the right. He’s offside by a few yards, but still the linesman waits until he gives the ball away before he raises his flag. That was probably clear enough to have been given at the time.
10 mins: Dalot’s second crossing opportunity of the game, this time on his right foot, is emphatically overhit and ends in a goal-kick.
9 mins: It is, as it should be, high-paced, low-precision stuff so far. “We’ve just been told (in the USA commentary) that the first derby was United representing a local church versus City representing a railway,” writes Justin Kavanagh. “Not much has really changed: The Reds haven’t had a prayer recently, while the Sky Blues have gone off the rails completely.”
6 mins: A first foray forward for United, whose break ends with Ederson catching Dalot’s cross from the left.
5 mins: De Bruyne swings a looping cross towards the far post, where Haaland is being marked by Martinez. The defender wins this one.
What a goal from Burnley's Zian Flemming 😨🔥
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) December 15, 2024
Outrageous. pic.twitter.com/nu0On2ey8p
3 mins: Some early possession for City, which ends when Doku takes on Mazraoui and runs out of play.
1 min: Peeeeep! The home side get the ball rolling.
Blue Moon rings out. Hand shaken, coin flipped, teams huddling. Kick-off imminent.
The players are in the tunnel-type mirror-walled foyer area. Kick-off just a few minutes away. “So, reading between the lines, Amorim is saying that Rashford got dressed wrong?” writes Matt Dony. “I bet he put his socks on before his shorts. Nothing weirder.” I’m with you here. Socks go on last, simple.
An email! “Looks like City’s injury crisis is really starting to bite, with just £200m of talent on the bench,” writes Tim Woods. “Still, as a Liverpool fan I find myself in that rare position of hoping for a United win. Despite their troubles, I still fear City can put together a 25-game winning run to deny us (or Chelsea) the title once again.” Obviously I’m completely impartial, but it would be nice if a different team won the league for a change. Four in a row and six out of seven is quite enough for the time being.
Updated
It’s only a few months since United’s then manager, Erik ten Hag, described the idea of Rashford being dropped as “crazy”, and that “I would almost say that, as a person, you are not OK when you bring such speculation … I’m very happy with Marcus, with everything. With his defending part, offensive, he performs very good.”
A bit more from Amorim on the Rashford/Garnacho situation:
Of course the context is difficult, we have to win games and we have a difficult situation. I pay attention to everything – the way you eat, the way you put on your clothes – then I have to decide. I have a lot of players to choose from and today I’ve made my choice.
Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, has confirmed that Matheus Nunes will start at left-back for Manchester City because “he’s the only option we have”.
Ruben Amorim says, smiling, that the decision to leave out Rashford and Garnacho was down to what he has seen from them in “training, performance [and] engagement with teammates”, which feels quietly damning.
We tried to evaluate everything – training, performance, game performance, engagement with teammates. Everything is on the line when we analyse and try to choose the players. It’s my selection. I don’t want to send a message, it’s simply evaluation. Everyone understands my decision.
"It's just simple selection" 💬
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 15, 2024
Ruben Amorim explains his decision to not include Marcus Rashford or Alejandro Garnacho in his side 😳 pic.twitter.com/a9CdgPmugV
Meanwhile Jonathan Wilson has written about Ruben Amorim’s task at Manchester United:
There was a moment, at about 5.30pm last Saturday, when there seemed a genuine danger that Manchester United might be turning into a serious football club. But it took only two minutes and the sight of Nikola Milenkovic soaring above Lisandro Martínez for that facade to collapse. Two further weird goals later – the sort of accidents that speak of a profound carelessness – and it was clear that the banter era still has some time to run.
That was only the beginning. By the following morning, Dan Ashworth had been mutual-consented out of the club: five months’ gardening leave followed by five months of actual work, a truly magnificent piece of living satire, even before you consider the compensation United had to pay Newcastle to secure him and the hefty payoff he must have received.
Much more here:
I’ve got some pre-match reading for you, starting with this piece by Tom Bassam about Pep Guardiola’s derby record.
Marcus Rashford has played in all 15 of Manchester United’s Premier League games this season but that run ends today: he and Alejandro Garnacho, with 22 league starts between them, have been left out of the matchday squad by Ruben Amorim.
The teams news is in, and the line-ups look like this:
Man City: Ederson, Walker, Dias, Gvardiol, Gundogan, Silva, Doku, De Bruyne, Foden, Matheus Nunes, Haaland. Subs: Ortega, Stones, Kovacic, Grealish, Savio, Simpson-Pusey, O’Reilly, McAtee, Mubama.
Man Utd: Onana, de Ligt, Maguire, Martinez, Mazraoui, Ugarte, Fernandes, Dalot, Diallo, Hojlund, Mount. Subs: Bayindir, Lindelof, Zirkzee, Malacia, Eriksen, Yoro, Casemiro, Antony, Mainoo.
Referee: Anthony Taylor.
In the blue corner for #MCIMNU 🩵
— Manchester City (@ManCity) December 15, 2024
XI | Ederson, Walker (C), Dias, Gvardiol, Gundogan, De Bruyne, Bernardo, Nunes, Foden, Doku, Haaland
SUBS | Ortega Moreno, Stones, Kovacic, Grealish, Savinho, Simpson-Pusey, Mubama, O'Reilly, McAtee#ManCity | @etihad pic.twitter.com/2VP4OICPCf
🚨 TEAM NEWS 🚨
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 15, 2024
In the red corner... 👊#MUFC || #MCIMUN
Updated
Hello world!
It’s the Premier League’s fifth-best team against the 13th, a side that would move level with Liverpool in the home-games-only league table if they win – and lag behind only Brentford - against one that has beaten only one team away from home in the league all season, and that was Southampton three months and a day ago. None of this sound very exciting.
But it’s hard to think of a more intriguing recent Manchester derby. Perhaps it’s come too soon in Ruben Amorim’s spell in charge of United, and results – one win in his four league games so far, three in six if you throw in the Europa League – suggest he has yet to turn that ship around. But at the same time we don’t know what Big Derby Energy might do to them, and they have the encouragement of knowing that this Manchester City side are currently worse (on form and in transition) than most sides in the Premier League. Amorim has first-hand experience of this, having led Sporting Lisbon to a rollicking 4-1 rout of City in the Champions League at the start of last month (albeit that was a very odd game, which I thought City should have won). Add to that City’s defensive injury crisis, compounded by Rico Lewis’s suspension. “The soul and the spirit of this team is there,” says Pep Guardiola. “We have to focus on ourselves because we’re not being at the level we want to be also, so we can’t think about the momentum of the others,” says Amorim. “We just have to think about ourselves.”
Anyway, enough of that. It’s a derby, and a bigger one than usual. Welcome!
