It’s easy to forget who you are sometimes, and there are few things more damaging to anyone’s ability to perform at their best than an identity crisis.
Manchester City had a massive dark night of the soul last season, and have shown signs this season that they still hadn’t quite re-discovered themselves. Nobody in that squad looked more lost last season than Erling Haaland and Phil Foden.
This derby could be just what both players needed to make themselves feel sexy in the mirror once again.
City fans got used to the sight of Haaland and Foden sulking around the pitch last season, two players who thrive off the knowledge they are just preternaturally talented in a way few players in world football can match reduced to the office grump who resents having to come into work every morning.
We have sympathy. Both players have been world-class since they were teenagers, and happily took on the challenge of playing for the planet’s most esteemed manager at one of its richest clubs with stunning panache. Haaland, the brilliant unstoppable goalscorer. Foden, the uncontrollable dynamo who could pierce even the most stubborn of low blocks.
Both set standards for themselves that vanishingly few players are able to maintain year after year after year. An off season for either players can be forgiven. The problem for City last season was that both of them lost the thread of themselves at the same time. Some 42 per cent of City’s games in which both players appeared last season ended with neither player on the scoresheet. It had been just 30 per cent in their treble-winning season in 2022/23.
READ MORE: Liverpool to retain Premier League title by default as they get away with it again against Burnley
Pep Guardiola will take huge encouragement, then, that both Foden and Haaland were far more identifiably Foden and Haaland here. Foden’s guided header to open the scoring was followed by exactly the celebration you would expect from a Stockport lad scoring in the Manchester derby, proudly shoving the badge into the face of elated fans at pitchside. The fire has clearly not gone out.
Having got that goal, it was clear to see that Foden was actually having fun. Guardiola’s response to that hard spell last season was to ease up on trying to press and grind opponents into submission, and instead concentrating on attacking more directly and intensely.
That has not been an entirely easy transition for City, and Foden has had to get used to playing in a system in which he is no longer the pattern-breaking maverick who does things other players in that system can’t and don’t in tight spaces; that honour now falls to Jeremy Doku.
But here, Foden looked like he was learning to stop worrying and love the extra space this quicker style of play can give him. He was volleying passes out to the wings, playing long balls in behind the United defence, and enjoying acting more as a playmaker than a penalty box crasher.
Haaland, meanwhile, was an absolute pillar for City. When he is not enjoying himself, it shows up more much starkly than most, and he begins to feel like the kind of player who contributes nothing if he is not getting among the goals.
Not here. He almost scored in the first attack of the game. He was winning towering defensive headers in his own box. He was chasing down United defenders. He was playing with his back to goal to bring others into play. He was doing it all with that sh*t-eating grin that opponents must absolutely despise, and which grew even broader after he completed a brace of goals in trademark style.
Happy players tend to play better football, and nothing makes you happier than a resounding win against your closest rivals. City have to make sure they harness those vibes and make sure they don’t ebb away again.
