A change in the balance of power in Manchester?

OCT 29 — What a weekend that was. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard the hugely shocking news that Manchester United lost 6-1 at home to their traditional enemies Manchester City. Yes, you read that right, it was 6-1, and it was at Old Trafford.

If you're not a follower of the English Premier League (EPL), I'm sure that bit of news still managed to reach your radar through the normal media channels, or even from fans of other EPL clubs taunting Manchester United fans, and of course from Manchester City fans themselves.

When a club has been as incredibly successful as Manchester United has been in the EPL era, it is natural for some fans of other clubs to get sick of seeing the same team winning over and over again, but it is also natural to have some fair-weather fans join the Manchester United brigade whose only reason for being seem to be to gloat about how great their club is, so much so that you'd think that they're actually the Manchester United players who sweated and fought for all the glory.

That is why Manchester United fans generally have a bad reputation among fans of other clubs, even though there are also huge sections of their fandom who are perfectly reasonable and humble people and who just love the football being played, but being the rational people that they are, they will never be as loud as the loud and obnoxious "glory hunters", so it's the glory hunters who are unfortunately the "face" and "voice" of Manchester United fans to most normal people.

So last Sunday's 6-1 result (God, how I love writing that scoreline over and over again!) was simply lovely to all us non-Manchester United fans just to see the reaction of the "glory hunters." Not only did their team lose to the "noisy neighbours", but they were humiliated by that unbelievable scoreline, and all this at home in front of their very own fans.

After years of suffering on our part having to listen to the "glory hunters" gloat and gloat endlessly, it's beautiful to see them stunned into silence, and struggling to come up with lame excuses for the humiliating loss.

Some in the media have even boldly claimed that this earth-shattering result signals a seismic shift in the balance of football power in Manchester, and by the same implication in the EPL, as Manchester City has, for the last two seasons threatened to break into the top two with hundreds of millions of pounds being invested into their team by their rich owners.

Their impressive start to this season, which has seen their players finally gelling together as a cohesive unit, has made a lot of people think that winning the EPL this season is not a far-fetched proposition anymore.

Couple that with the loud chorus that "one of these days Manchester United will get a pasting because of their shaky defence and soft centre of a midfield" that's been ringing for the last couple of matches, then this result can even seem inevitable. Against Liverpool they were poor, but even against Norwich they were lucky because if Norwich had striking firepower of slightly better calibre, Manchester United might have even got a shelling then.

Of course if you've been watching the Manchester derby, when it was 11 vs 11 players in the first half, Manchester United didn't do that bad as it was frankly a dull match with both teams playing with caution and mostly battling it out in the middle of the park. Manchester City carved out only one opportunity but made it count by turning it into a goal.

But sitting back and waiting to counter attack is a sensible strategy when you're the away team, especially at a ground as tough as Old Trafford. It was Manchester United who were slightly disappointing for failing to test Joe Hart in any serious manner in the first half, but still the way they played in that first half may at worse result in a draw, which still wouldn't be too bad.

Starting the second half quite brightly and with more attacking impetus, Manchester United practically shot themselves in the foot when Jonny Evans was handed a red card for a silly foul, and with one man less and in their attempts to find a goal to at least salvage a point, they were left horribly exposed at the back against attacking opposition of City's quality.

Even as a non-United fan, I wouldn't put too much stock on this result signalling a shift in the balance of power yet, as manager Sir Alex Ferguson has won the EPL with even worse teams than the one he has this year. And I'm sure he gave the full hairdryer treatment to all those players who seemed to have given up when there were still around 10 more minutes to play against City.

For all we know things might even be back to normal come December when the games pile up, as Ferguson has long utilised this busy part of the football calendar to catch up on some points against his rivals. But for now, at least, we can enjoy the noise from the noisy neighbours, and the beautiful silence from the "glory hunters."

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

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