90min

Twitter reacts as Man City take derby-day bragging rights

By Matt O'Connor-Simpson

A great game for the neutrals
A great game for the neutrals / 90min
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The Manchester derby rarely disappoints and once again the Etihad Stadium played host to a thrilling game of football on Sunday afternoon.

Breaking from the tradition of recent seasons, Man City ran out winners and they did so in style, exploiting some calamitous defending from Man Utd to secure a 4-1 victory.

As is often the case before games of this magnitude, the announcement of each side's starting XI was keenly anticipated.

When the lineups eventually dropped there were several surprises, none more so than Marcus Rashford being left out despite the absences of Edinson Cavani and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Before the game both sides also showed support for the people of Ukraine. A respectful and powerful touch, as everyone on social media agreed.

It did not take long for City to get the party start. Just five minutes in some good work down the left resulted in the ball being worked into Kevin De Bruyne, who made no mistake from close range.

Not the best start for United...

Despite the poor defending that led to the opener, United actually responded pretty well and soon found an equaliser.

Of course, it just had to be ex-City man Jadon Sancho who scored it – and what a goal it was.

The action kept on coming in the first half with United's problems at the back reemerging. This time a string of calamities, with Harry Maguire, Alex Telles and Victor Lindelof all at fault, allowed De Bruyne to net his second.

After a frantic first half most people's take was that United had done well, but they were again let down by some terrible defending.

Many were also hyping up De Bruyne's display.

United continued to look shaky at the back in the second half and on the hour mark Maguire was lucky not to be sent off for lunging in on De Bruyne.

With just over 20 minutes to play City killed the game off through Riyad Mahrez. The goal was spookily reminiscent of Paul Scholes in his prime and to add insult to injury for the travelling support, it even took a slight deflection off their captain.

In the closing stages City toyed with their opponents and it did not take long for the 'OLE!'s to start.

City did have the ball in the back of the net for a fourth time through Mahrez too, only for it to be chalked off for a marginal offside call...and then given following a VAR review.

Mercifully, Michael Oliver put the Red Devils out of their misery almost immediately afterwards, and the post-match inquisition could begin.

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