{"id":769914,"date":"2026-09-14T01:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769914\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T01:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T01:58:19","slug":"danny-murphy-column-their-intelligence-and-resilience-was-key-how-man-city-earned-statement-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/769914\/","title":{"rendered":"Danny Murphy column: ‘Their intelligence and resilience was key’ – how Man City earned ‘statement win’"},"content":{"rendered":"

City were also superb further up the field. Antoine Semenyo and Erling Haaland were keeping the ball when it was played up to them, as well as winning free-kicks or beating people.<\/p>\n

When he came on for Rayan Cherki, Iliman Ndiaye again did all of that brilliantly. He gave them a different dimension, and was a big reason they won the game.<\/p>\n

That substitution was a clever one by Maresca and brave too, because while Ndiaye is better than Cherki defensively, he is also a ball-carrier who travels with the ball better too.<\/p>\n

I remember Maresca making a couple of negative substitutions this time last year when his Chelsea<\/a> side went down to 10 men early on at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n

They ended up losing the game<\/a> and he got a bit of criticism for it, but this time he went with Ndiaye, and it worked a treat.<\/p>\n

He gave them an outlet and made some great runs – he was part of everything they did positively from an attacking point of view and was even involved in the goal – but also did his share of defending, and winning the ball back.<\/p>\n

As the game went on, it looked like United were the ones who looked tired despite having the extra man for so long.<\/p>\n

Maybe that was down to them playing on Thursday night, while City had their Champions League game on Tuesday, but it was not just energy that United were lacking.<\/p>\n

They simply did not have the know-how to cause City problems. Let’s not forget Donnarumma’s late save because it was a brilliant stop, but Maresca’s men were comfortable most of the time.<\/p>\n

Danny Murphy was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City were also superb further up the field. Antoine Semenyo and Erling Haaland were keeping the ball when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}