With City's Blue Moon rising, all the pressure in on United
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Michael Owen settled the last Manchester derby with a winning goal in the seventh minute of injury time at Old Trafford. Photograph: Tom Jenkins
It has only ever happened once on Sir Alex Ferguson's watch, so long ago that the Premier League had yet to come into existence and Crystal Palace finished third in the top tier of English football. In 1991, Manchester City finished fifth in the league, with Manchester United three points below them in sixth. In seventh and eighth places that year, just to emphasise that we are practically talking pre-history, were Wimbledon and Nottingham Forest.
City's inability to finish within touching distance of their neighbours in the Premier League era, never mind above them, may have led a few bookmakers to take their eye off the ball at the start of the season. A City-supporting friend of mine, looking for a playful punt, managed to get odds of 33-1 on Blue Moon rising above Red Empire. If you look at the records, perhaps that does not seem unduly generous. If you looked at City's long sequence of draws under Mark Hughes, you might even feel it a tad stingy. City's colossal bank balance has not so far been brought to bear in the current transfer window, and the three straight wins under Roberto Mancini that took them into the top four last weekend are not necessarily cause for premature celebration either, because the Italian was lucky to be presented with a sequence of winnable games and greater challenges will undoubtedly come later. But that's enough about City. Anyone scrutinising the Eastlands operation for pointers to local ascendancy might be looking in the wrong place. The key almost certainly lies with United.
That's the United who have lost five games already, gone out of the FA Cup to League One opponents, have enormous financial problems away from the pitch and a team destabilised by injuries on it. The United that play City in a Carling Cup semi-final this week that Ferguson has admitted he now has "mixed views" about. His original intention, before the FA Cup exit to Leeds, was to keep faith with his younger, less experienced, Carling Cup side. That way, even if you go out to local rivals, you don't admit complete defeat. Now the United manager is talking of bringing back some of his more experienced players for the cup tie, not necessarily picking a full‑strength side but mixing in a bit more nous and know‑how to try to avoid another shock on the scale of Leeds.
Not that it would be much of a shock were City to win at least the home leg, no matter what strength of team Ferguson puts out. They came close to drawing at Old Trafford in the league encounter earlier in the season and since that day in September the Blues have unquestionably improved while United have been besieged by problems from all directions. That is the factor bookmakers and pundits failed to consider at the start of the season. There seemed no reason, even allowing for the loss of Cristiano Ronaldo, for United to go into sudden and sharp decline. The league table still argues powerfully that they have done no such thing, yet by their own high standards United have been a disappointment this season, and it is only through good fortune that no one else in a generally unimpressive top four has managed to open up a commanding lead.
Why have United been such a disappointment? Three main reasons. First Ronaldo's wow factor has been missed. Not just his extremely useful goals, assists, free-kicks, and ability to change a game on his own, a certain amount of fearlessness has gone and not been replaced. Second, injuries to Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic and others have robbed Ferguson of his first-choice back line for long periods. Third, despite both scoring yesterday, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov have just not gelled as an attacking partnership. The former is having to do too much on his own, which is never in his best interests no matter how willing to work he might be, and the latter, even if he is carrying a knee injury that will require surgery at the end of the season, has not lived up to his £24m transfer fee and failed to reproduce the form that so captivated his admirers at Spurs.
In terms of living up to an exorbitant fee, Carlos Tevez is doing a far better job at City. Not only is he in the goals and growing in confidence week by week, his roaming runs and non-stop workrate are a perfect fit with the ability of players such as Craig Bellamy and Martin Petrov to launch quick counters. At Old Trafford, he tended to replicate Rooney's contribution, which is why Ferguson found it difficult to accommodate him and can be believed when he says he has no regrets about selling him. While the United manager must have been delighted to bank that money and pick up Michael Owen on a free, City are now the ones with all the attacking options, even with Emmanuel Adebayor still to come back.
Ferguson is not about to admit that, of course, though he does concede that City's money could make them a force in the future. "They could offer a billion for Lionel Messi and it probably wouldn't affect them too much," he speculated. "Given their money anything is possible." True, but anything is still possible this season, even if the only incomer is Patrick Vieira. And the pressure is not on the arrivistes, it's all on the team struggling to stay at the top.