Manchester United yearn for payback in bid to ruin Guardiola’s treble target

I t was a small and inconsequential moment but one that said plenty about a mood and a rivalry. Manchester City were 6-2 up in the Premier League derby against United at the Etihad Stadium last October and we were into the 89th minute.

Previously, after Phil Foden had made it 6-1 on 73 minutes to join Erling Haaland as the scorer of a hat-trick, the City fans had joked that they wanted 10. Or maybe they were not joking. Now, shortly after the United substitute Anthony Martial had pulled one back, City built in midfield only for João Cancelo to play a loose pass, Bruno Fernandes intercepting for the visitors. There was an audible groan from the home support.

To repeat, City were 6-2 up in the last minute. Their record victory in this fixture is 6-1 – achieved in 1926 and 2011. They had dismantled their most hated opponents. And yet when Cancelo gave away the ball, there was frustration.

Perhaps it was just an instinctive reaction. But the hard-to-ignore impression was that the crowd did want more. When Martial got another consolation goal with a stoppage-time penalty to make the final scoreline 6-3, it almost disguised the humiliation United had suffered. There were some City fans who, in their hearts, were a little bit annoyed about that.

This is what total supremacy looks like – why words such as machine and juggernaut are applied to Pep Guardiola’s team. Maybe it is a byproduct of the standards that the manager sets, his remorselessness from game to game, from one phase of play to the next. Or perhaps the City support have just become spoiled, especially those under the age of 25.

What is indisputable is that there is no club over whom City would rather lord it, no opponent they would rather make suffer, and it