United couldn’t cap an improved second-half display with an equalizer, leaving Mourinho with just one win over Guardiola in his last 10 attempts, and only three in a total of 17 games against Guardiola’s teams.
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Mourinho mixed things up for the second half, throwing on Marcus Rashford, Ander Herrera and later Anthony Martial and taking a more direct approach in search of an equalizer, but City looked more risky on the counter-attack. I know his future will be absolutely brilliant. When we see each other, sometimes we don’t agree about our opinions.
Reigning champions Leicester and then Ukraine’s Zorya Luhansk arrive at Old Trafford during a frantic month that offers United the chance to build up some positive momentum after the City loss.
“Kevin had an unbelievable, awesome game”, Guardiola said.
Manchester City striker Kelechi Iheanacho has described his derby victor against Manchester United as a “dream come true”. “Let’s go, get the ball back”. “And mistakes from the referee are football too”.
The first half saw City run riot-quicker to the ball and more inventive than United.
“I know it is a risk, because if you lose the ball it is a goal against us, but when we win with that, we win in many things”. We had counter-attacks and we didn’t finish. Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Jesse Lingard and Luke Shaw were substituted during Saturday’s match, with the latter appearing to pick up a knock in the second half.
Pep Guardiola defended Claudio Bravo after the goalkeeper’s troubled debut for Manchester City in the 2-1 derby victory at Manchester United. In the last period of the first half we scored a goal and we could immediately score again but I think that was outside the context of the game in the first half.
“He was the only striker we had in that moment”, the Spaniard said, via the Manchester Evening News.
‘This happened in a busy area during the day when lots of people would have been around and seen something. “He is available. I’m not saying he’s ready to play 90 minutes but he’s ready to try to help us”.
Having starting Saturday’s match in the place of the suspended Sergio Aguero, the 19-year-old Iheanacho couldn’t hide his elation.
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But he saved his most trenchant remarks for centre-backs Daley Blind and, in particular, Eric Bailly, saying some players had shown signs they did not possess the requisite big-game temperament.
