Only nine Manchester United players might be truly committed in this shambolic squad

Sir Alex Ferguson was at the Etihad on Sunday but not Goodison Park on Saturday. Ferguson is too craven to speak out against the owners of Manchester United, still a paying employer and where he has a row of seats in the directors' box, and he has long known actions speak louder than words.

If Mancunian schoolchildren went to City one week and United the next, as they did in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, they might have thought they were watching a different sport. City's 2-2 draw with Liverpool was a culture shock for anyone subjected to watching United on a weekly basis, becoming as torturous as Alex's therapy in A Clockwork Orange.

City and Liverpool play at a pace that suggests they are on fast-forward. The football is fabulous but just as striking is the work ethic. Every player in those teams strives to justify their starting role every week.

It is going to be a long six weeks for United supporters. That's how long they have until the season ends and beyond the Premier League calendar, there may be a City or Liverpool FA Cup and Champions League final appearances to stomach.

United players do not have the stomach for a lunchtime kick-off at relegation fodder. A cardboard sign was strapped to a pole outside Carrington on Sunday. 'Embarrassing s--tbags' it read. "Not fit to wear the shirt get out of our club!!"

"My gut feeling is they struggled with the expectation," Ralf Rangnick opined. Where to start with that? At 0-0, Evertonians were looking to pick a fight with Dominic Calvert-Lewin or Michael Keane, seemingly resigned to their fate. They clearly hadn't watched United much. Anthony Gordon scored in only the 27th minute and the contest effectively ended then.

The Goodison roar can carry so far it