Manchester City played digital football. United are a dial-up version

“Yeah, not bad.” With 44 minutes gone at the Etihad Stadium Manchester City scored a goal that brought the usual cheers and roars, but also something else, the urge to laugh. City had already spent the first half playing football that seemed to have befitted from an operating system upgrade, demonstrating the latest miracle processor against a batch of red-shirted patsies.

The move to make it 4-0 was a moment of super-compression, lines cut in a perfect zig-zag from outside City’s penalty area to the far left-hand corner of the Manchester United goal without friction or drag or loss of scale.

It took eight touches to make it, starting with Kevin De Bruyne surging through the centre, shrugging Christian Eriksen off like a rugby centre while delivering a fine touch to Erling Haaland. The pass basically told Haaland what to do. He took one touch to make the space then curled a dream of a pass that took out three defenders and found Phil Foden, already networked into this, already in the chat, bullocking through to zing the ball into the corner.

And in that moment 4-0 really didn’t feel like a stretch, or a surprise, or even much of a humiliation for United, who had spent that half chasing ghosts and shadows, shapes at the edge of their eyeline.

By the end a 6-3 defeat was even quite generous. But then this was also a strange game, not the usual thrashing, some tactical oversight exploited, or a career-high performance. It felt like something else, the result of unarguable maths. On the one hand a mortal, everyday football team, all joins and cuts and snagged gears. On the other a blend of pure imagination and bottomless resources, 12 years in the making, finessed and refined to create this fine pitch of touch and movement.