Manchester City V Manchester United 1–0

David De Gea

Manchester City are top of the Barclays Premier League after a 1–0 win over Manchester United at Eti­had Sta­dium on Monday. Just as the home sup­port­ers were begin­ning to get frus­trated, Vin­cent Kom­pany scored the win­ner for The Manchester Blues from a flag kick by David Silva in the 45th minute of the fiercely con­tested game.

Sir Alex Fer­guson had reas­ons to be dis­ap­poin­ted after his play­ers suffered a humi­li­at­ing 1–0 defeat to neigh­bour­ing Manchester City on Monday night. Reign­ing Eng­lish Premier League cham­pi­ons Manchester United, who came into this Manchester encounter three points clear of their fel­low title chal­lengers Manchester City in second place, offered little in attack and looked some­what dis­join­ted for large parts of both halves. And even though pug­na­cious centre for­ward Mario Balo­telli was a not­able omis­sion from the Manchester City start­ing line up, the fast and aggress­ive home team man­aged to put their Manchester coun­ter­parts under some con­sid­er­able pres­sure dur­ing the fren­etic and tem­pes­tu­ous match. The cru­cial moment of the con­test arrived only a few seconds before the sound of the half time whistle when Manchester City cap­tain Vin­cent Kom­pany nod­ded an accur­ate corner kick from Span­ish inter­na­tional David Silva behind a com­pletely help­less David de Gea in the Manchester United goal to hand The Manchester Blues a 1–0 lead. On the Manchester United bench, Sir Alex Fer­guson looked slightly embar­rassed as ref­eree Andre Mar­riner sig­nalled the break shortly after. Roberto Mancini´s Manchester City side star­ted the second half in the same attack­ing man­ner as they did the first and the blue shirts had a golden oppor­tun­ity to double their lead early in the last period but for­ward think­ing mid­field play­maker Samir Nasri could only curl the ball wide of the far post. The Old Traf­ford side, for their part, struggled to find their way through a hard work­ing and well organ­ised home defence and a lot of their play was depress­ingly unima­gin­at­ive. Then in the 58th minute of the action packed drama, Manchester United boss Sir Alex Fer­guson even­tu­ally decided to replace mid­field dog of war Ji-sung Park with Eng­land fron­trun­ner Danny Wel­beck to give his team more attack­ing options. The Manchester City play­ers did not rest on their laurels, though, and con­tin­ued to fly for­ward look­ing for their second goal of the even­ing. And des­pite five minutes of stop­page time being added by the ref­eree at the end of the match, Manchester United were unable to score the equal­iser leav­ing their cross­city rivals Manchester City with three import­ant points. Sir Alex Fer­guson: “It was a dam­aging res­ult, Manchester Citry are in the driv­ing seat and we are up against it. They only need to win to two more games and they win the league, simple as that.”

Manchester City V Manchester United 1–0
Manchester City Start­ing Lineup: Joe Hart, Pablo Zabaleta, Vin­cent Kom­pany, Joleon Lescott, Gael Clichy, Yaya Toure, Gareth Barry, David Silva, Car­los Tevez, Samir Nasri, Ser­gio Aguero. Manchester City Sub­sti­tutes: Micah Richards, James Mil­ner, Nigel de Jong. Manchester United Start­ing Lineup: David de Gea, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling, Rio Ferdin­and, Patrice Evra, Michael Car­rick, Paul Scholes, Luis Nani, Ji-Sung Park, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney. Manchester United Sub­sti­tutes: Danny Wel­beck, Dim­itar Ber­batov, Ant­o­nio Valen­cia, Ash­ley Young, Javier Chicharito Hernan­dez, Ben Amos.

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