City suffer as Marwood and Nasri duck challenges
Last season, Manchester United’s defensive approach away to Manchester City ended in failure. Ferguson’s team selection for yesterday’s match made it plain that if United were going to fail again, they would fail differently and City became the seventh side to score twice against United in the league this season and still lose.
This time it was Roberto Mancini who confounded his supporters with a bizarre approach to the game. All season he has been unable to decide between Carlos Tevez and Edin Dzeko as the best foil for Sergio Aguero. The choice yesterday was even more difficult than usual. United had looked so vulnerable from set-pieces in their 4-3 win over Reading that Dzeko’s aerial strength was a big point in his favour. On the other hand, Tevez is a world class matchwinner who would be determined not to lose against his former team.
So Mancini chose Mario Balotelli.
The appearance of Tevez shortly after half-time helped tilt the balance back in City’s favour, but by that time they were 2-0 down.
We know Mancini has long had a bee in his bonnet about the man formerly in charge of transfers at City, Brian Marwood. Last Friday, Mancini had again unfavourably compared City’s transfer market dealings with United’s, noting that while City had barely strengthened, United had added 25 goals to their squad by signing van Persie and Kagawa. His words would seem to be borne out by the fact van Persie’s name appears on the scoresheet beside the 90th minute winner.
Except that van Persie’s free-kick would never have hit the net without a little help from Samir Nasri. You might remember that while his City team-mates were celebrating on the field after winning the title last May, Nasri took the opportunity to attack his critics — “they can’t say nothing to me now”.
Yesterday, as his side faced an injury-time free-kick having fought their way back to 2-2, Nasri actually dodged behind his two team-mates in the City wall like a man trying to duck out of the way of an explosion, daring to expose only his left boot to the chance of being hit by van Persie’s shot. The shot hit that boot and spun beyond the reach of Joe Hart into the net. It was a moment that revealed the measure of the man and when Roberto Mancini sits down at the end of the season to reckon where it all went wrong, the name of Samir Nasri should be right up there at the top with Brian Marwood.
