Ken Early: Manchester stalemate a peculiar relief for both sides

A Manchester derby under the Old Trafford floodlights, no fans in the stadium but you can’t have everything. It should be the game of the weekend, but the excitement doesn’t last long.

Two cautious teams playing 4-2-3-1, defending with six and attacking with four, refusing to leave any space for the other to counterattack. The whole thing played out at walking pace. At the end the rival players hug, as though they are celebrating the result together.

Why has this game been so bad? Fatigue is the familiar excuse. But then Pep Guardiola, one of the managers who has been most vocal on the need for the Premier League to allow five substitutes like all the other leagues, has made only one substitution. He took off Riyad Mahrez, his top Premier League goalscorer and arguably the player most likely to make something happen out of nothing, to bring on another winger, Ferran Torres, maintaining the holding pattern, preserving the stalemate.

It’s not as though Guardiola had no scope to try anything different. With two defensive midfielders out there in Fernandinho and Rodri, he can change the shape of his midfield, speculate to accumulate, he can replace one of them with a more offensive-minded midfielder – Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva are ready on the bench. He decides not to do this because he is settling for a point.

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An empty Old Trafford

Afterwards he admits that he and City were content with a draw. “We would love to win, but it’s okay. It’s Old Trafford, we cannot forget it. It’s Old Trafford!” Except, as everyone knows, it’s an empty Old Trafford that might as well be any stadium in the world. Guardiola seems to realise how ridiculous his point sounds in the circumstances and pivots to heaping praise on the opposing team rather than the venue. “It’s a tough tough opponent. His physicality, his press, they are so fast up front . . . Yeah, it’s Man United!”

Guardiola emphasises the last point with a wide-eyed, beaming grin and an excited wave of his hands, and for a disturbing moment he resembles Matt Hancock forcing a laugh as he justifies the British government’s handling of the pandemic on Good Morning Britain.

“It’s Man United” is a line you expect to hear from Guardiola’s opposite number. As a justification for City’s caution, it might sound better if United had not already lost at home in the league against Spurs, Arsenal and Crystal Palace, if they had not just got home from a mauling in Leipzig, where they had completed their disorderly exit from the Champions League after a painful defeat at home to PSG the previous week.

You get the feeling that when Guardiola says “it’s Man United!” he’s not talking about the football team per se. You can tell he doesn’t really rate the football team because he keeps talking about them being strong, so fast, and good on the counterattack – ie they excel in all the less-sophisticated dimensions of the game. When Guardiola raves about your pace and power you know he doesn’t respect your ability.

Guardiola is talking more about United’s cultural footprint. Even if this is not a particularly strong United team, they remain City’s main rivals, with vastly more fans and more friends in the media. City lost 5-2 to Leicester earlier this season, and when you see Leicester sitting above City in the table you could conclude that they too are rivals, but Guardiola knows that losing to United is a thousand times worse.

The closest the game came to actual excitement was two minutes after half-time when United went down the right and crossed for Marcus Rashford, who had got away from Kyle Walker in midfield and reached the ball first. Walker recovered to get goalside of Rashford, but then stuck out a foot and brought him down: penalty.

Walker’s concentration

Now it was shaping up to be a very painful evening in the life of Kyle Walker, a night when his past mistakes would be exhumed and pored over by pundits who would conclude that he has never had the power of concentration necessary to play at this level. One of the mistakes would be the penalty he conceded against Leicester in that 5-2 defeat – a mistake most people had long forgotten about. Give away the winner against United, and people don’t forget.

Then the VAR showed that Rashford had run offside: Walker was saved. Most people who watched this match will remember it as desperately boring and featureless. Not Kyle Walker. For him this was a moment of euphoric relief as sweet as winning any trophy.

Thinking of what was at stake for Walker in that moment helps you understand why both teams were so risk averse. Losing this match means more than just losing the points. It means humiliation, ridicule, denunciation. For Solskjaer, so soon after going out of the Champions League, it could mean losing his job; it certainly means that people will be talking about sacking him for the next few weeks. For Guardiola, not in imminent danger of the sack, it means that people will say he has lost “it”, whatever it is. City’s recent run of four wins in five matches without conceding a goal might as well never have happened. All anyone would talk about would be the four defeats in his last five against United.

When you see how United cut teams up on the counter and otherwise not at all, and when you look at the table, with the leaders averaging barely more than two points a game, you can see why for City, discretion was the better part of valour, and chasing the win was not worth the risk.

In the end, the narrative of the match having failed to produce any obvious victims, the pundits were forced to ridicule Harry Maguire and John Stones for hugging each other after the final whistle. Such open displays of respect and affection are inappropriate between opponents. But consider how much Maguire and Stones have in common. Frequently figures of ridicule, tonight they have lived to fight another day. If they can’t hide their shared relief, who can really blame them?