{{The reigning champions may have left it too late to prevent United claiming the title for the 20th time – but this deserved win hints at the pedigree that remains within Roberto Mancini’s squad.}}<\/p>\n
Substitute Sergio Aguero’s brilliant winner 12 minutes from time gave City their second successive victory at Old Trafford, one which will hurt United boss Sir Alex Ferguson, who saw his side produce a subdued performance.<\/p>\n
James Milner gave the visitors the lead early in the second half before an own goal from City captain Vincent Kompany put United level.<\/p>\n
The final word, however, went to Aguero, who demonstrated pace and a powerful finish to decide an occasionally ill-tempered derby which saw eight players cautioned.<\/p>\n
United still have much room for manoeuvre with the commanding advantage at the top of the Premier League, but this was a composed, resilient performance from City that demonstrated what might have been.<\/p>\n
Mancini has insisted the gap between the sides is not as wide as their points deficit suggests and on this evidence he is right. The Italian’s argument, however, falls down on grounds of consistency as this was United first loss in 18 league games.<\/p>\n
Wayne Rooney was back in United’s attack after recovering from the groin injury that kept him out of the FA Cup defeat at Chelsea. <\/p>\n
He was fired up and visibly furious with team-mate Danny Welbeck in the opening minutes when he selfishly chose to go alone with his team-mate unmarked in yards of space.<\/p>\n
Phil Jones was alongside Rio Ferdinand in central defence and he showed his worth with a couple of crucial penalty area interceptions, most notably from Carlos Tevez as the former United striker closed in six yards out.<\/p>\n
City were seeing plenty of the ball but neither side was able to create any clear-cut chances, although Rafael’s looping effort bounced to safety off the angle of post and bar moments before half-time.<\/p>\n
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{{The reigning champions may have left it too late to prevent United claiming the title for the 20th time – but this deserved win hints at the pedigree that remains within Roberto Mancini’s squad.}} Substitute Sergio Aguero’s brilliant winner 12 minutes from time gave City their second successive victory at Old Trafford, one which will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-7026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7026"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=7026"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=7026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}