This season is a reminder of how hard it is to dominate the Premier League
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Suddenly, fascinatingly, every game seems fraught with possibility, even if that has meant mostly pain for the struggling champions, Manchester City. Sometimes the only explanation that makes sense is that football is governed not by the laws of physics, by data and xG and logic, but that it is in fact a malevolent deity, capricious and mischievous and that sometimes it turns on you and there’s really not much that can be done.
![[Jonathan Wilson]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2018/04/24/Jonathan_Wilson,_L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The Manchester derby had been a largely dreadful game between two tentative sides, lacking confidence and conviction, poking and prodding and giving very little indication they’ve been the two most successful clubs over the history of the Premier League. But City had had all three of the shots on target in the first half and, in that sense, were worth the lead given them when Joško Gvardiol headed in Kevin De Bruyne’s deflected cross, a goal that would have seemed freakish had it not been the eighth United have conceded from a corner this season, and the fourth under Ruben Amorim.
![[man in a red jersey runs]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c3020e572a46db978eb0d5a0cf3d890af93c1be3/92_149_1624_975/master/1624.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
But in the second half, United tried to play, without looking especially good at it; City did not. They froze. United kept going, although Amad Diallo was the only player who seemed remotely dangerous. Even then, everything suggested it would be a scruffy 1-0 City win that would have lifted them to within six points of the leaders Liverpool and perhaps restored morale.
But then Matheus Nunes left a backpass short, allowing Diallo to nip in, before compounding the error with a reckless attempt to regain possession and conceding a penalty. Bruno Fernandes, after what was surely his worst game in a United shirt, converted the penalty. Nunes had initially been deployed at left-back as part of a Guardiola rejig, some attempt to discover a new combination that might restore a sense of calm. It was a selection to recall some of Guardiola’s weirder decisions before big European games, but if he’s overthinking matches against this United team he really is doomed.
