The ‘best’ man won

Man City manager Guardiola hails team’s second-half show as defending champions hammer arch-rivals United 4-1 to regain six-point lead atop table

A double from Kevin De Bruyne. A double from Riyad Mahrez. The double completed by Man City over United in this season’s Manchester derbies.

Just further confirmation of the divergent paths these one-time rivals are on in the Premier League.

The 4-1 victory on Sunday restored City’s six-point lead over Liverpool in its quest to defend the title and pick up the trophy for a sixth time in a decade.

Man City boss Pep Guardiola

“If the second half is not our best I don’t know what we have to do,” City manager Pep Guardiola said. “I’m a demanding man, but I know my limits and I know the players’ limits and the second half in all terms [was excellent],” he added.

United languishing

Meanwhile, United are languishing 22 points behind City and now no longer even in the fourth and final Champions League place. And Guardiola summed up the difference in desire as well as quality between the teams. “The biggest success for me as a manager is that after three Premier League titles is that still we run like we run and are there to try [to win the league] again,” he said. It was being outclassed at home and losing 2-0 to City in the derby in November that precipitated the firing of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. The final blow was losing to Watford—the team that was beaten 3-2 in Sunday’s other game that allowed Arsenal to dislodge United from fourth. “They showed what kind of top quality team they have,” United interim manager Ralf Rangnick said. 

Rangnick hopeful 

“I didn’t actually expect Arsenal to lose at Watford. So for us it’s clear, if we still want to have a chance to finish fourth at the end of the season, we can almost not drop any more points, and we also know that in those 10 games that we have to play, there are a few other difficult ones so let’s take it game by game. For us, it’s important we keep developing the team, which we did in the last couple of months.”

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