Nothing is going to be easy for you that you long for and that you haven’t tasted for 22 years. In Nottingham they scored a bittersweet draw (0-0) because it came after Manchester City’s defeat (2-0) in the duel against their eternal rival at Old Trafford. The distance with respect to the second-placed leader increases, but the feeling remains that he has missed a good opportunity to overtake him in the fight for the championship. And on Sunday the gap to the chase can be reduced to four points if Aston Villa beats Everton at Villa Park.
0
Matz Sels, Neco Williams, Murillo, Nikola Milenkovic, Ola Aina, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Ibrahim Sangaré, Elliot Anderson, Morgan Gibbs-White, Nicolás Domínguez (Omari Hutchinson, min. 88) y Igor Jesus (Dan Ndoye, min. 75)
0
David Raya, Jurriën Timber, Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi (Eberechi Eze, min. 78), Martin Ødegaard (Mikel Merino, min. 56), Viktor Gyökeres (Gabriel Jesus, min. 56), Noni Madueke (Bukayo Saka, min. 56) y Gabriel Martinelli (Leandro Trossard, min. 45)
Referee Michael Oliver
yellow cards
Jurrien Maduro (min. 36), Ola Aina (min. 89)
but he lacked aim. Martinelli and Saka had the goal in their boots, but Forest, leathery and feisty, emerged unscathed from a match that ended between continuous transitions and with a look of disappointment on the face of Mikel Arteta, the Gunners’ coach. Next week they will host Manchester United at the Emirates, who have finally found relief from their misfortunes.
“They were the better team and their victory is fair,” summarized Pep Guardiola at the end of the Manchester derby. The award-winning Catalan coach had just gone through an ordeal at the dream factory, where in the final minutes of the game he was seen leaning on the bench, staring into the green on which his boys were undergoing a review. Manchester United scored two legal goals, three were disallowed due to tight offsides, a couple more times they hit the posts and a few more required the most gigantic version of the huge Donnarumma. Today, City is unable to compete at the level that requires fighting for the top spot in the Premier League. Nine points have escaped from the last twelve they have played and they are losing their footing in the fight with Arsenal while they show signs of being a team ready to make a costly, in every sense, transition.
City did not compete in the derby, surpassed by a vigorous rival that is trying to rebuild after the departure of Ruben Amorim. In this situation, Michel Carrick, who had already served as interim coach four years ago, made his debut as coach this Saturday. Since then he passed without much brilliance through Middlesbrough, in the second level of English football. With Carrick, who was a Cartesian midfielder, there are no surprises, a line of four in the rearguard with stripes for Maguire and Mainoo, unprecedented with Amorim and demanded by the stands, on the field. He found himself with a rival in diapers in defense (Khusanov and Alleyne were the center backs) and whom he punished with balls behind his back. There was hardly any response from City. Haaland left the game in the eightieth minute after touching the ball 14 times, just two of them in the rival area. Foden tiptoed through the game and the debutant Semenyo, for whom they just paid 75 million euros, barely made a couple of moves.
United took the field as if they were going to play the last game in their history, with so much passion that after ten minutes they were lucky not to be left with ten after a wild tackle by winger Dalot on Doku. In Spain they would have shown him three red cards, in the Manchester derby he left with a yellow card. Guardiola did not want to apologize for that action either. “If he did, we wouldn’t advance. We have to focus on ourselves. We don’t play to win,” he said. This was not the case with his rival. Ready for friction and fray, Carrick’s pupils always handled themselves with the knife between their teeth. Maguire hit the post, Diallo and Bruno Fernandes had their goals disallowed and Khusanov saved a goal after a brilliant defensive action after a rude mistake by Rodri, who is still looking for his best version. City stayed on their feet for an hour due to their skill in shooting the line and, above all, due to the enormous interventions of Donnarumma, who even touched Mbeumo’s shot that earned the first local goal. The Cameroonian striker, fresh from the African Cup, started and completed a counterattack after a foul taken badly by City. As United came out in a stampede to harm their rival, in reality that was the reflection of the entire match. With a quarter of an hour left, Dorgu scored the second and Guardiola raised the white flag.
