Manchester City 0-0 Manchester United

Well that was one forgettable game of football, so forgettable i have forgotten it already. I'm not complaining, i would have took a point before the game, so i'm happy enough. I wasn't really sure what to expect from City, though after seeing their game against the rent boys earlier in the season, i shoud have known what to expect. That is a team that is not going to challenge, never mind win the title this season.
The starting line up was either a pleasant surprise or utterly predictable, depending on how believable you thought Fergie's claims of being unable to know what his starting line up would be until just before kick off. I usually take his pre match injury talk with a pinch of salt, but i was a little worried last night i have to admit. Of course i should have known as we lined up with as strong a line up as posible in the circumstances.
I was a liitle surprised and a liitle worried the way the game started. I can't remember the last time that City have kicked off against us and then proceeded to have almost total possession for the first ten minutes. They didn't create anything and as soon as United got their foot on the ball a more normal pattern of play established itself with United seeing at least as much of the ball as City. One thing City did manage to do last night though was shackle Scholes pretty effectively. Unlike last season where they just got everybody behind the ball, last night they tried to press us further up the pitch. The return of Tevez helped them in that repect as you got to hand it to them, it worked.
To say it was a dull first half would be doing a diservice to the word dull. One shot on goal a piece was the limit of excitement, at least United managed to create ours in open play as opposed to City's effort Tevez's free kick that Van Der Sar comfortably pushed out for a corner. I thought we were slightly the better team and the only team that had threatened to create anything during open play. But the fact was for all our decent midfield play we weren't good enough to unlock their defence. I thought Park's renaissance came to halt last night, he didn't have a bad game, but he didn't produce in the areas that we needed him to. In the first half especially, he kept drifting inside, finding himself in good positions but was unable to maximise the opportunity. Oh for a fit Ryan Giggs last night, with Scholes suspended for Saturday i hope he will be back for the Villa clash or our lack of creativity could well come back to haunt us again.
The second half was a slightly better spectacle, for a United fan anyway, but we never really threatened to open them up and the only real chance was Brown's cross that Berbatov connected cleanly with but ended up straight at a grateful Joe Hart. City really reverted to type, under Mancini that is, with a second half display that was even more negative than last season's encounter at the boo camp. They spend all that money in the summer and play against a United team in slow decline and without Rooney and the approach the game like that. Is Mancini really a better manager than Mark Hughes, i know who i would sooner have managing my team anyway.
So back to four points behind Chelsea and another hard game on Saturday and injuries galore, we needed to win one of these game in my view to try and keep the presure on the rent boys, the pressure is on.

Van Der Sar wasn't too happy claiming City were only ever interested in the point whilst United at least tried to go for the three. James Lawton claims the reality of last night was the exposure of the limits to both clubs title ambitions. I can't really argue with too much of that, the United of 2006-2009 would have ground out the three points last night i'm sure of that. Daniel Taylor in his five things we learnt last night puts his finger on one of our problems at the moment, we are not the same without a Rooney in his pomp leading the line or at least in the starting line up. We all know we are a little short of the quality needed to lead the title charge we we saw in that three year title run.

Mark Ogden claims that Fergie won the mind games before last nights encounter with his claims of a virus decimating our playing staff and then naming as near to our strongest side as possible. I think Ogden is claiming a bit too much on Fergie's behalf there, it's not as if City changed their approach to the match. They played the same way they always do against the big sides under Mancini.
Whether there was a bug or not, the team slection problems will not go away, with Scholes suspended, Evra and Rafael defintely out and who knows where Giggs is on his hamstring recovery, he has to find a team able to go to Villa park and try and get the three points to keep us close to Chelsea. It was a bit worrying to hear that Fletcher had an ankle problem before last night's game.

Jeremy Warner reports on the Bank of England's governor Mervyn King's quarterly report update. Warner interprets the speech as crunch time for the world economy and he could have added the coalition's economic policy. David Prosser reports on the questions about the governors political neutrality. There may have been more questions if Ed Balls had won the labour leadership election. David Blanchflower writes about the problems of unemployment for the unemployed themselves with the misery of Marx's reserve army.
The financial markets have been swept by rumours of a Greek style bailout of the Irish economy, as it goes from bad to worse.

There are fears that the coalition's universal welfare benefit may have to be delayed as HMRC's IT system may not be up to the task. What a surprise that isn't.

Simon Jenkins writes about the hypocrisy of British reltions with China as trade trumps human rights and just about everything else. We just aren't self sufficiently wealthy enough to be pontificating to anybody anymore. We probably lost any moral high ground that we ever had anyway with the charade over WMD and the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Bagehot reports on how Tony Blair got around the problem in his dealings with China during his premiership.
I don't think Blair and new labour ever had this embarrassment though. I would love their bluff to be called, but i just can't see it happening. From what i have ssen so far of the coalition or the tory part at least, is a continuation of the love in with the world of big business and the city.
The Guardian report that the world economic situation is worrying the Chinese authorties who think the Americans are themselves to blame over the economic plight. Everybody seems to recognise the imbalances between the US and Chinese econmies and the need to rectify them but there is nowhere near any kind of consensus about how we are to get there or even where "there" is.
The Chinese trade surplus grew last among amongst rising exports and imports as the tensions to let the yuan appreciate grow ahead of the G20 summit. Robert Peston uses his blog to ask if China's surplus matters, i would have thought that everybody realises that it does. The problem with dealing with it is that you end up rewarding countires who have ran there econmies badly, ie us and the US and would end up punishing countries who have managed their econmoies well, the Chinese and Germans. You can see why they might not see the fairness of this. Faisal Islam thinks the Chinese are already paving the way for a lessening of economic ties with the US as it is losing faith in the attractivness of the dollar. This is the report of the Chinese credit agency Faisal Islam mentioned.
Obama can see the way the wind is blowing as he visits south east Asia, but with the Republicans resurgent and a upsurgent tea party behind them what can he actually do.

Classic Charles Mingus