Terrace Talk: Man City - Reds can’t wriggle off the hook as city stays Blue

By Simon Curtis

The lost soul who had decided to go fishing in the canal alongside the revamped Cottonfield Wharf near Bengal Street an hour before the match probably did not realise that — standing forlornly by the stagnant ditch with a two-foot piece of fibreglass — he might be representing any number of pre-match metaphors.

Was he Der Spiegel’s editor-in-chief dredging for more interesting titbits concerning that most modern of football phenomena, ‘sportwashing’, a term for new millennium football if ever there was one? Or was he a slightly Spartan version of Jose Mourinho, desperately looking for nourishment?

Walking through the roads and byways of Ancoats on your way to the Etihad, you are immediately hit by the grand refurbishment of Manchester that is now in full swing. This is an area which used to be a dusty and decrepit series of choked canal basins and derelict millhouses, but now wallows in its Time

magazine award of 13th coolest place to live in the world.

Forget your Rios and your Viennas, your Montego Bays and your Key Wests, Ancoats is where it’s at. The espresso bars and loft apartments that have replaced the muggers’ dens and alleys of ill-repute shine and glitter in the sloping winter light scudding in over East Manchester.

At the end of the journey — appropriately enough for an area under such intense investment — lies the great bowl of the Etihad, monumental reminder of the growth and power of the new Manchester City.

More hopeful images were lurking inside. Georgian maestro Georgi Kinkladze, interviewed on the pitch at the start, brought memories of previous midfield genius at the club, but also recollection of a not-too-distant past of tears and tomfoolery.

The Manchester derby, a mud and nettles affair, a throbbing history of gristle and bone, from the city that begot the Industrial Revolution and has reinvented itself as a bristling modern metropolis of bistros and micro businesses, has to keep up with all this preening good health too.

Here though, after an artistic start from City, more metaphors flooded the senses. The worker bee emblem that is ever more evident in the city these days serves as a lasting reminder of the industriousness and diligence of this grand city of blue and red. And here we had Pep’s boys and Jose’s lads stepping right into line with the down-to-earth busy theme.

Hard graft, solid tracking, lung-busting runs up and down.

United, living days a million miles from the Ferguson-baked cakewalk of the 90s and 00s, when City would melt from view as swiftly as a pickpocket in the Arndale Centre, are hardly shrinking violets under Mourinho, stubborn and cautious and scorers of three late winners in their last six games.

They are rebuilding an old reputation for comebacks and late goals, so a 1-0 half-time lead looked a fragile gift.

Suddenly all hell threatened to break loose. The olés that followed Aguero’s cracking rising shot that made it 2-0 died in the air as “Altrincham’s Anthony Taylor” gave United a foothold from the penalty spot. Was the brooding figure of Mourinho threatening another hijack?

By the end though the crowd’s giddy olés had returned after Bernardo Silva’s perfect ball in was dispatched by Ilkay Gundogan from close range and City once more had their two-goal cushion. All that was left was to offer David Silva his now customary standing ovation, as the packed house stood again to the little Spanish conductor.

City’s run of six-goal wins had come to an end at just two. Six against United will have to remain a memory from another time instead.

So, as the hordes filtered out whooping and high-fiving to pass the by now lightly frosted canal-side fisherman, a tortuous week of garish headlines comes to an end.

For City, the talking was always to be done on the pitch. Their week’s work has proved powerfully eloquent.

Der Speigel’s numbers may not be totting up off the pitch, but those out on the green patch of the Etihad add up nicely enough: The powerhouse is in the blue corner of this thriving city now and is likely to stay there for the foreseeable future.