For City and Newcastle fans, 90 blessed minutes is beyond the circus

With the utmost diligence and care, the Newcastle fan pulls a neatly folded green Saudi Arabia flag from a holdall, pulls it taut at the corners, drapes it over his shoulders and walks on.

Across the road, by the big Asda, with equal diligence and equal care, some Manchester City fans are collecting and cataloguing non-perishable donations for the local food bank. Behind them the giant steel beams of the Etihad Stadium glisten in the watery morning light, like candles on the world’s largest birthday cake.

Manchester City v Newcastle is not one thing, however much some would like it to be. No game of football ever is. Even the match itself splinters from the first whistle into a thousand little subplots and mini-dramas. The absorbing tussle between Jack Grealish and Kieran Trippier on the Newcastle right. Kevin De Bruyne’s battles with time, muscle memory and the laws of physics. Nick Pope’s Olympic timewasting.

There is beauty here, too, and in abundance. Fourteen minutes in, Phil Foden barrels in from the right wing, swerving this way and that like a little remote-control car on wheels, creating the first goal off the heel of Sven Botman. All game Foden is a mesmeric, dizzying presence: chest out, legs pumping, eyes constantly darting and interrogating.

Ederson produces one of the great goalkeeping punches, parting the throng and sending the ball flying almost as far as the halfway line. Erling Haaland and Dan Burn have an epic scrap.

I was at the pub with a Newcastle fan on Friday night. He has no love whatsoever for the club’s ownership, has no wish to defend them, indeed has spent the past few months grappling with the moral dimensions of supporting this team in this era. But he also says this: for 90 blessed minutes