At times during a tight, edgy, bruising opening hour, as Manchester City scuffled with rare intensity on the flanks, Vincent Kompany dropped deep in central defence and Yaya Touré rumbled through a congested middle, it was tempting to imagine a familiar, flickering presence popping up on the touchline, somewhere in between the twin chalk rectangles.
There has not been much talk about Manuel Pellegrini this season, City’s own charmingly opaque and – let’s face it – largely unintelligible Chilean, whose brooding, agreeably gloomy features have more or less disappeared from the memory in the excitement of the new, restlessly innovative regime.
But he was at the Etihad for the derby in spirit at least, flickering in and out of sight, glimpsed out of the corner of your eye in his oddly melancholy anorak as City chucked out the whizzy ideas and dug in, going full Manuel for the night.
There is of, course, something intriguing, and indeed quite funny, about Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho, endlessly-garlanded architects of the new Mancunian Jerusalem, slogging it out for the fourth-place trophy with Arsène.
Here Guardiola went for something new when it mattered most, selecting what was essentially a Pellegrini-shaped team for the most vital fixture of the season’s endgame so far.
Gone were the positional experiments, the free radicals. City lined up with actual full-backs as full-backs, two strong centre backs and the old Touré-Fernandinho firm in the centre of midfield. This was a proper back four too. It was a startling selection in its own way, and evidence of flexibility too, of a needs-must pragmatism from the great aesthete.
City’s entire back six belonged to the Pellegrini era and beyond, a high-stakes last stand for the old guard. The entire sextet - Kolarov-Kompany-Otamendi-Zabaleta-Touré-Fernanindho could be on their way out or to the fringes in the summer. Chuck in the still-hilarious Claudio Bravo, the goalkeeping equivalent of a handsome stage set that turns out to be made of sugar paper and collapses the moment you lean on it, and that is a pretty odd-looking Pep team.
Muscular
It worked though, after a fashion. This was a bruising battle which City shaded, playing like the City of recent memory, a muscular passing team with good width and power in the centre, just lacking the devil of David Silva.
Mourinho had gone all-out for speed in attack, with Marcus Rashford flanked by Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Anthony Martial.
City were pushing United back, though, stretching them on the flanks not in the usual Pep way, with overloads and zippy little triangles, but with a relentless, usual force, Zabaleta snapping into tackles, Touré rumbling potently and the back four staying deep, fearful of space behind. Zabaleta and Kolarov got a grip. Well-timed tackles were executed, gristle and muscle and know-how holding sway.
By the end a point for each side had started to look a hard-won, if slightly anti-climactic result, Guardiola’s attempts to right a season that might have been drifting beyond his control helped by the shadow of that hard, powerful, well-seasoned team he has spent so long trying to make over. Guardian Service
