Alejandro Garnacho moment with Man City rival summed up insipid Manchester derby

Eric Cantona was in the Old Trafford stands for theNo wonder. He would have had more fun watching seagulls follow trawlers.

As the clock ticked painfully, but mercifully, towards added time, there was a break in what counted for play and Omar Marmoush sought refreshment. And pleasantly, he shared his drink and a smile with Lovely.

Without going full it was a moment that encapsulated this dreary engagement - a load of mates from Cheshire’s coolest places having a Sunday afternoon run-out that was not to be taken over-seriously. Quite how there were four yellow cards in a match that lacked any sort of edge is something of a mystery.

The result was more damaging for side, who, with seven games remaining, are facing a real struggle to finish in the top five. And if they take this form and approach into their remaining fixtures, they will not be playing football next season.

side might have Champions League football next season and although they performed with familiar ordinariness, at least they were not given too strenuous a time ahead of the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final in Lyon. But they really should have done better against a City team whose fundamental problem this season has been a likelihood to concede goals every time an opponent stages a counter-attack.

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And in football, that really is what you call a fundamental problem. This is a team that still has plenty of the ball but has forgotten how to defend. Opened up by a basic move, they were lucky not to be in serious trouble inside a minute when Ruben Dias was left in Garnacho’s wake and brought the Argentinian down on the edge of the penalty area.

A covering team-mate just about meant a yellow rather than a red and replays showed it was a tight call not to give a penalty. But at the back for City, it has been amateur-hour on far too many occasions. Fortunately for Guardiola’s side, United are not exactly the best-equipped team when it comes to exploiting defensive vulnerability.

Garnacho fell over his own feet when presented with a relatively simple chance and Casemiro turned a good shooting chance into a pass to Ederson. Not that City - without Erling Haaland, of course - looked any more potent, especially as Guardiola had opted for a very narrow system.

And with Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin de Bruyne and Mateo Kovacic pushing a combined hundred years, there was an element of walking football about the City midfield. It really was a dreadful contest, a game with very few redeeming features. There was the odd moment of quality but it truly was the odd moment. Two or three, tops.

There was a sweetly-struck Marmoush volley beaten away by Andre Onana and a decent effort from Joshua Zirkzee that brought a camera-friendly save out of Ederson. But that was it. Zirkzee had replaced Rasmus Hojlund, who went virtually unnoticed for 70 minutes. It has gone without saying for a long time that Amorim desperately needs high-quality striking reinforcements this summer and Hojlund’s performance here was yet more confirmation.

But Hojlund was just one of a bad bunch, a bunch who looked as relieved as everyone watching when John Brooks whistled an end to the dullness. Cantona must have wished he had not bothered.

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