Pep Guardiola’s ‘tippy-tappy’ shows up Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s flaws as Manchester United slip further away

Manchester City befuddled their arch-rivals in a 3-1 derby victory at Old Trafford, which spotlighted the gulf between them on the pitch, in the dugout and in the quest to be England's primary force

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer cuts a forlorn figure on the sidelines during Manchester United's defeat by Man City (Getty)

“I want us to play ‘proper’ football,” Ole Gunnar Solskjaer asserted as he dismissed the ‘tippy-tappy’ style Pep Guardiola’s teams have been famed for as incompatible with Manchester United’s identity.

Within 24 hours of that statement, Manchester City had reduced his players to training cones for large swathes of an awfully one-sided derby at Old Trafford that begged the question: is such a non-performance actually the distinguishing trait of a team that have won just three - home to Colchester United and Newcastle, away to Burnley - of their last eight games?

Solskjaer would insist United’s defining attributes are “pace and power” while pointing to their counter-attacking prowess, but that surely cannot be enough for this club?

Guardiola’s plan to abrogate the sole strength of his opponents was, by his explanation, simple. “Pass the ball, just have more passes,” he said of his selection that consisted of seven midfielders, including the impressive Fernandinho at the heart of defence.

“We wanted to control the counter and the best way to do that is with more passes.”

So tippy-tappy here, tippy-tappy there and before United could have their first shot on target, they were already flat out on the canvas in the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final - and possibly the tie.

In a six-minute spell after the half-hour mark, a fluid City befuddled the hosts with movement and purpose. There was no set formation, only an onset of controlled chaos that perplexed Solskjaer in the technical area as much as it did his players.

Bernardo Silva, one of Guardiola’s chief shape-shifters on the night, picked up possession in the centre circle and slipped a pass down the middle that Riyad Mahrez collected before rounding David De Gea and rolling home. Victor Lindelof was caught out of position and United were caught with their pants down.

More misery was unloaded when Silva and Mahrez combined to supply Kevin De Bruyne on the wide left, who mercilessly sat Phil Jones down and sent him back to 2019. The Belgian dynamo tried to curl his effort into the bottom left, with De Gea saving it before cursing as the ball ricocheted off Andreas Pereira and nestled into the back of the net.

By that point, Silva had already smacked an unstoppable left-footed curler into the top corner to give City the lead and so the scoreline read 3-0 in favour to the visitors with just 38 minutes played.

“We could have even been winning by four or five, because we missed a few chances,” the sublime Portugal international said and it was no exaggeration.

The first half served to zoom in on an established fact: there is no measuring tool that can truly count the staggering gulf between these clubs.

Guardiola credited his side’s dominance during that period to "the quality of my players. We don’t have time to train the systems."

De Bruyne had revealed City spent just 15 minutes on derby morning working on their shape, which led the manager to talk up the "intelligence" of his group.

Conversely, Solskjaer admitted “from their goal to half-time, it was the worst we’ve played. We just could not cope with the setback. We were running in between. The pressure didn't work and we let them play.

“Our heads dropped. We just made decisions that we should not do.”

More than once in the opening 45, the away end had echoed Guardiola’s pre-match sentiments that United should stick with Solskjaer, serenading the Norwegian with “we want you to stay.” That is the worst endorsement going, especially with Mauricio Pochettino looming large.

To the United manager’s credit, his second-half substitution of Nemanja Matic for Jesse Lingard added stability in the centre of the park. “They changed the shape from a diamond to a 4-4-2 and we struggled a little bit,” Guardiola conceded.

United are witnessing the price for not getting Guardiola as their own manager (Getty) (Manchester United via Getty Imag)

In truth, City had also reduced the intensity to “save our legs” as per Kyle Walker’s assessment and Marcus Rashford gave United a lifeline in the tie with a fine finish from Mason Greenwood’s pass after being gifted possession.

That the visitors could ease off on a semi-final stage in the Manchester derby tells its own story and Solskjaer was honest in saying the defending league champions and Liverpool, England’s current pacesetters, are operating at a level well beyond them.

"It's not going to be a quick fix," he said. “Those two clubs are the best in the world and that’s the task in front of us.

"It's something that we've started and I think you can see we're still a way off."

It’s important to remember that while City have already been sculptured to Guardiola’s specifications, Solskjaer has only been in the job for just over a year without an adequate squad refresh.

The problem, however, is that by the time the Catalan arrived in Manchester in 2016 - a move four years in the making by his club - United were already reeling from massive missteps following Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement.

One of those was not going all out to land Guardiola, who was their first-choice candidate to succeed the Scot. Giving Solskjaer a permanent contract after he met and exceeded expectations in caretaker charge has been another, with the evidence in results and performances since that decision making the point hard to argue against.

United’s squad can do with an extreme makeover - nearly £900 million has already been spent post-Ferguson - and their structures behind the scenes can be sharpened, but there’s no masking another truth. The two managers that have reconfigured the standards required to be at the top - Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp - are in a different stratosphere to Solskjaer.