Sport

Opinions divided after Manchester v Merseyside battle

Viewers treated to a ‘hard-hitting’ exchange between Thierry Henry and Ibrahimovic

Manchester United’s Paul Pogba reacts after a missed chance against Liverpool. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

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Mary Hannigan
Sun Jan 15 2017 - 22:58

‘Super Sunday: Merseyside v Manchester’, Sky’s typically understated title for the day that was in it.

“The whole world is watching,” David Jones told us, “literally” Jamie Redknapp would have added if he wasn’t stuck up on the gantry with Jamie Carragher, rather than located in the cosy Old Trafford studio.

This was especially tough on a poorly Jamie C whose cold had him sounding a little like Bonnie Tyler, although Jamie R resisted joshing and crooning “turn around bright eyes” in his direction lest he be chucked from the gantry.

Match One was between the blue bits of Manchester and Merseyside, and a week after Paul Merson had tipped either Everton, Stoke or Bournemouth to win the FA Cup, only to see them all fall in a heap at the first hurdle, he fired up his crystal ball to help him forecast the outcome of the Goodison Park bout.

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“I fink Man City win this,” he told Jeff Stelling, “with the players they’ve got, if they click like they did last week, I don’t know who’s going to stop ‘em.”

Blue Merseyside 4, Blue Manchester 0.

Turf Accountants throughout these islands are now being inundated with people placing fivers on whoever Merse ain’t backing.

Any way, it was a decidedly grisly day for City, the final straw conceding a late fourth to a player who looks like he has yet to celebrate his ninth birthday, Ademola Lookman.

Graeme Souness put the calamity down to their “tippy tappy” football, his most grievous criticism of any footballing outfit, one he debuted, incidentally, when Croatia exasperated him as long ago as 2008, the year Ademola was born.

If the tippy tappiness irked him, it was nothing to his reading on the mood meter when Jonesie let the viewers know about the week’s big news, that Paul Pogba had become the first Premier League footballer to have his very own Twitter emoji.

By full-time, Sounie’s verdict – and we’re paraphrasing here – was that if the Pogman carries on playing like that, an emoji is the only prize he’ll collect in his career.

You’re awesome

Before the game, though, we were treated to a conversation between Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, with a brief cameo from Pogba, the hard-hitting exchange going something like this: “You’re awesome”; “So are you”; “Thanks brother”; [Fist bump]. Woodward and Bernstein could only purr.

Thierry: “Why do you think the team are so good at the moment? Apart from your goals!”

Zlatan: “We got the new coach, we got four new players, some players left, the situation was new. I’m here to win and I want to make the team win. It takes time.” And in a rare display of humility: “It took God seven days to make the world, it will take a little bit more for me.”

Match time and we were treated to the debut of Sky’s Spidercam which swooped over the pitch to give us a bird’s eye view of the action. And with its assistance Martin Tyler and Gary Neville ended up running out of fingers to count how many times Pogba struggled to cope with an airborne Dejan Lovren.

But Jamie R, sitting beside them on the gantry, Jamie C having moved downstairs to have a Lemsip bath, reckoned United were getting a grip of the game and that things looked “ominous” for Liverpool.

And with that Liverpool scored. James Milner with the penalty, Pogba providing the assist.

“He’s making a Pog’s ear of it,” concluded Martin, by now Twitter unkindly using a turd for the French lad’s emoji.

Second half, on it wore, a chance here and there, but no sign of an equaliser. Until Martin asked Jamie R for his take on the game.

“I think Liverpool look comfortable.” And with that Zlatan scored.

A draw, then. Back to the studio where Sounie and Jamie C had a heated row about whether Pogba was responsible for Pogba failing to cope with an in-flight Lovren, Thierry positioned between the pair, too fearful to interject until the handball issue came up, a subject on which . . . okay, okay, emoji: head in hands.

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