The reasons why Man Utd lost derby to Man City couldn't be more obvious

For about 15 first-half minutes, it looked as though Erik ten Hag had figured it out – the key to beating Manchester City at the Etihad, a feat achieved just once in the Premier League in the last two years. By the time the dust had settled on a 3-1 defeat, it became pretty clear that he hadn’t.

The only side to have emerged from Eastlands with three points since the start of the 2022/23 season are Brentford, who won 2-1 in November 2022 thanks to an Ivan Toney winner in the eighth minute of stoppage time – Darwin time, as it has now been formally rechristened.

Just like Manchester United on Sunday, Brentford didn’t try to match City for possession or territory but looked for deep direct balls into the channels and quick counter-attacks, and it worked a treat – Toney opened the scoring after sweeping home Ben Mee’s knock-down from a deep free-kick and sealed the deal late on with a quick counter from an over-the-top ball. For a whole quarter of an hour, it seemed as though United had been watching the tape.

United managed to give the City defence no fewer than three early scares with quick passes over the top and down the channels. Alejandro Garnacho was played down in between and behind two defenders early, but couldn’t find an angle to get the ball to Marcus Rashford. An opportunistic ball over the top only a fractional distance over the halfway line, exploiting City’s incredibly high press, would have set Rashford clean through had his first touch been better. In between the two – his goal.

Rashford is has become a very enigmatic player. A humble, stoic demeanour and his remarkable work feeding children during the first coronavirus lockdown juxtapose awkwardly with unsanctioned nights on the town. His early excellence and his sublime form last season, when he hit 30 goals in all competitions, sit uncomfortably next to his struggles in the 2021/22 season and this term. But he still has immense natural talent – and he caught that strike beautifully. We will see few better connections between boot and ball this year.

But while the early exchanges focused spotlight squarely on Rashford and the narrative seemed set to spin out around his success or failure over the 90 minutes, he quick became a piece of the set dressing on Phil Foden’s stage. But while his many detractors will no doubt gleefully sharpen their knives after a sparkling strike was followed up by precious little else, Rashford really wasn’t at fault. It’s hard to impress when nobody gives you the ball.

After taking the lead, United regressed comprehensively. The early signs were that United knew that they had to try for passes over the top – but from around the 20-minute mark, they stopped trying anything at all. They tried to simply defend deep and keep City at arm’s length, and looked like a relegation-battling side desperately praying for an ill-deserved draw in the process. If Chelsea were due brickbats for their lack of positivity in extra time of the EFL Cup final last weekend, then United should get the same treatment here. Their performance was supine.

Direct balls over the top and quick counter-attacks are one of the common themes of teams that beat City. Another is that they don’t simply set back and try to protect their lead when they go ahead. They defend, yes. They cede the middle of the park to City’s metronomic passing machine, sure. But they keep men up and continue to look for ways to get the ball forward. They keep City honest. United forgot about that part.

It should be noted, in fairness, that they mostly did the other half of the job – the stout zonal defending and denial of space to operate – quite well. Tackles were made, ground was stood, passing and shooting angles were shut down pretty effectively for large periods. For all the defensive injuries, they back four were disciplined and organised for large periods, and it took a light dusting of Foden’s magic to finally break them down.

But if all you do is defend and punt the ball away, you will almost certainly lose eventually. Plenty of sides have come to the Etihad and tried to dig in and hold the line – few have even managed a point. There has to be a threat going forward, or you will spend 90 minutes with City prodding and probing away until one of their many brilliant players comes up with something special, as Foden did so emphatically on this occasion.

It's also worth noting that while United did at least start the game by peppering the City back line with lofted passes, they never once found a way to counter-attack along the ground. This is where their awful summer transfer window comes in – they have shifted to a more direct style of play whilst simultaneously failing to add any pace or box-to-box ball-carrying skills to the squad.

The key to successful direct play is to be able to get players up in support of the forward line quickly. That support can come from midfield or from the wing-backs, but with United it never comes at all.

Their midfield is turgid, and the players they have added to it are either injured, in the case of Mason Mount, or simply not cut out for the club’s style of play, like Sofyan Amrabat, whose miserable late cameo summed up his season in suitably pitiful fashion. Five touches, two losses of possession, two lost one-on-one duels, one failed aerial duel, one failed dribble, one mistake leading directly to Erling Haaland’s goal. It is unclear what has happened to one of the stars of Morocco’s run to the World Cup semi-finals, but he has been abject, and has only contributed to United’s lack of midfield dynamism and strength in depth.

Everything amounted up to a game in which United got it all right for about 15 or 20 minutes, and then forgot what they were meant to be doing. Ten Hag referred to the game as being one of “really small margins,” but it was anything but. It was 73% possession to 27%, 27 shots to three, 3.33xG to 0.25. This was an utterly dominant performance by a team with a plan and the players to execute it against a team which had neither of the above. United can count themselves lucky to lose by only two goals, not least because of Haaland’s mystifying Ronnie Rosenthal-esque miss from under the bar. At least he, like Rosenthal back in 1992, scored in the end.

Of course, playing City isn’t easy. There is little shame in losing to one of the most expensively-assembled and precisely-engineered sides in the history of the sport. There is no shame in being worse than the European champions. But there is understandable disappointment in going down without a fight, or without any apparent attempt to win the game against one of your fiercest rivals. When United tried to batten down the hatches at 1-0 up, you could make excuses for it. At 1-1 and even 2-1 down, it’s harder to understand what Ten Hag was thinking, or what anyone dressed in red was hoping to achieve.

United came into this season on an upward curve. Then they bought poorly, instigated a new playing style without signing players sympathetic towards it, and have failed to keep key individuals on song. The result is a team who look as far away from their first post-Ferguson title as they ever have, and a derby defeat which should raise a lot of questions at Old Trafford.