United end City win spree

Manchester, March 8

Manchester United’s performance was a masterclass in defence and counter-attacking in their 2-0 win over their biggest rivals Manchester City. It took their unbeaten run to 22 in Premier League away matches and ended City’s impressive sequence of 28 unbeaten matches in all competitions including 21 successive wins which also has them leading the league table by 11 points.

United manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, praised his team: “We’ve improved massively, we’re more robust and resilient, and there is more personality in the team — that is what I like. We need to improve on so many things to get our consistency better. We need to be a better Man United than we were 16 months ago.

He added: “I thought we defended really well and we were more like ourselves with the ball attacking-wise. City are so far ahead you can’t really think about anything but making sure we win our games and be better than last year. We were third last season, so we want to move up the table, of course.”

United went into the lead as early as the second minute with a penalty when within 40 seconds of the start Gabriel Jesus, who had lost possession of the ball in midfield, came into the box and sent Anthony Martial sprawling. Bruno Fernandes placed the spot kick to the left of Ederson who got a hand to it but the shot was firmly struck.

City missed chances, the best of which came to Raheem Stirling who missed his kick from a good position and Ilkay Gundogan shot wide tamely. United kept defending well and Dean Henderson in goal, in place of David De Gea — on paternity leave in Spain — looked safe.

Within two minutes of the start of second half, City could have equalised but Rodri’s shot hit the bar after a clever build-up between Riyad Mahrez and Jesus. But just three minutes later, United again got an early goal, as they did in the first half.

Henderson’s long throw located Luke Shaw who raced passed two defenders and exchanged passes with Marcus Rashford before striking a low shot inside the far post. In the later stages Jesus put a shot wide and Stirling missed after a pass from Kyle Walker with United’s defence remaining solid.

A disappointed City manager, Pep Guadiola, said: “We will be in the news because we lost but the news is 21 victories in a row. The result is going to help us a lot to understand how difficult it is. It’s a lesson in football everything can happen. Congratulations to United.” He added: “We need six or seven victories from 10 games. It’s in our hands. Our opponents have to win all their games and we have to lose four or five. We have to start to win again.”

Andy Jalil