Man City vs Man United

Maguire, Rangnick and Rashford. Manchester United lost 4-1 to Manchester City in the Manchester derby on Sunday afternoon. United conceded early ...

It should be embarrassing for a club of United's stature to be treated with such sympathy, but the half-time scoreline should have at least encouraged them. Certain fringe players are still expressing bitterness at being overlooked in favour of a direct rival, an issue that dates back to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's final months as manager. Whereas United only have Fred and McTominay, while the other four don’t help in the way they should. "I feel sorry for him because it’s difficult when the players know he’s not going to stay, so how influential can he be with the team? The structure that United finalised a year ago needs changing as much as the flaky squad. The Reds were thoroughly outclassed as they fell to a 4-1 loss at Manchester City, where the scoreline could have been even bigger. "The criticism of Harry Maguire isn’t justified at all. United now find themselves a point behind Arsenal, with the Gunners holding three games in hand. It was a horror show from the Reds and they will be determined to quickly erase it from their memories. So while there looked to be little hope with 15 minutes to go yesterday, there is never no hope in that situation. There have been multiple names linked with the position at Old Trafford, but Mauricio Pochettino and Erik ten Hag seem to be the two leading candidates. However, there was a wide range of feelings experienced by United's loan army over the weekend.

Manchester City now have a six-point lead over Liverpool thanks to braces from Kevin De Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez.

United had problems at both ends, failing to engineer an attempt in the second half. Wan-Bissaka did not even get close to his man. For all United’s defensive folly, the equaliser was deserved. With no Cristiano Ronaldo, and Marcus Rashford starting on the bench, what United’s attack lacked in turn was a focal point. When Anthony Elanga was caught in possession, it was De Bruyne’s signal to charge, forcing a one-handed save from David de Gea as Harry Maguire wrestled problematically with Phil Foden. Kevin De Bruyne stood over the ball and the Etihad held its breath.

Manchester United captain Harry Maguire insists the Reds must have full focus over the next week to bounce back from Sunday's derby defeat.

We gave away the ball far too easily and we know that they like to control the game through possession and they did that in the second half." It enabled them to control the game through possession and it made it difficult for ourselves to get up the pitch, and obviously they did what they do in terms of keeping the ball and they did that well in the second half. Obviously we’ve given them nice moments, but not enough of them and we need to make sure that in the remaining games of the season - I know that they’ll be right behind us because that’s what they do, that’s why they’re the best fans in the world - we’ve got to make sure we put a smile back on their faces because I know it’s going to be hard for them this week. But 2-1 down, and we could take the positives into the second half and we’ve come out and we haven’t performed in the second half. We come into these games full of emotion, we give everything, we work tirelessly in the preparation, we look forward to the games and we had great belief that we could get the result. It’s a run of games where we know that we’ve got to go on a run, we’ve got to go and pick up win after win after win and we’re more than capable of doing it but we’ve got to show it on the pitch, we’ve got to show it every game that we go into, take each game as it comes, a big game against Tottenham next.