By Richard Jolly

Copyright independent

It was Manchester City, but not as we knew them. Or so the theory went, anyway. But for Manchester United, it was just the City they remembered. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, they had been destroyed in a derby in which both Phil Foden and Erling Haaland scored.

So, too, in 2025: there can be evidence of City’s decline in other games, in a league table that showed them in 16th at kick-off, but not in their latest demolition derby.