City 2 - 3 United

De Gea

Rafael Rio Evans(Smalling) Evra

Valencia(Jones) Cleverley(Welbeck) Carrick Young

Rooney RVP

Woah! My heart is still at the races. We were cruising by half time. City only really threatened our goalie on a few occasions and we looked very dangerous on the counter attack. But one bad refereeing decision and it almost fucked up an impressive display away from home. At 2-0, Young scored a perfectly legitimate goal which was ruled out by the linesman. City were given a freekick and from the resulting action, they scored. Obviously no ABU opened his trap and uttered one single word about that refereeing decision. Had that been in our favour, a barrage of posts from people who support Liverpool, Chelsea, Inter, Milan and Juventus, of all teams, would have appeared on facebook. Oh well! 

My man of the match was Wayne Rooney. The guy's excellent. He worked his socks off and scored two goals. That challenge he made right at the death near our penalty area, pretty much describes our best player. He's willing to do the dirty work as long as his team wins. Captain material. I thought RVP was pretty unanimous. He 'only' did three things; Started the move for Roo's first goal, rattled the post and scored the winner. Not bad, eh? 

This was also Young's best performance of the season. He produced Roo's first goal and was very unlucky not to score his first of the season. Actually, he did score but the linesman decided that he was offside. Carrick kept the ball moving, like he always does and I thought Cleverley had a very good game as well. Valencia was a tad frustrating on the right. Our back four had a good game. Rafael and Evra defended well and were more than decent on the overlap. In fact, Rafael got an assist to his name. Evans was doing very well until he got injured. His replacement, Smalling, was solid.  Rio was excellent, except on that one occasion when he lost the ball very cheaply and City almost scored. And finally, De Gea was very impressive. A mention should also go to late sub Welbeck who won us that late late freekick with his pressure on Zabaleta. 

The later the goals, the sweeter the feeling

Overall I'm obviously delighted. City hadn't lost a game at the Etihad for 2 years. I'm not sure whether that feat includes CL and FA Cup games as well. If that's the case, we did what Real Madrid and Dortmund didn't manage to do. It was an impressive performance by our boys. We've won away to Liverpool, Newcastle, Chelsea and City this season. The strange thing is that we're looking pretty weak against the so called inferior sides. Anyway,  a 6 point lead is obviously a very good lead to take into the crucial Christmas period. Long way to go until May, league titles aren't decided in December. But I would have been immensely happy with a draw today, never-mind the three points. This match should be a springboard to greater performances. Psychologically, our players should feel like they can beat anyone. True, City aren't what they were last year, but they're our closest challengers and that win was super sweet. Bring on Sunderland!

Facts

• Man City's run of 37 home games unbeaten has come to an end, that run starting on 20 Dec 2010 with a 2-1 defeat to Everton. 
• Man Utd have won 86 of the 88 PL games in which they were exactly 2-0 up at half-time, losing none.
• Five of the previous six PL meetings between Man City and Man Utd at the Etihad have ended in a 1-0 scoreline