Manchester United 1-2 Manchester City
Manager reactions:
City – Roberto Mancini:
“This win changes nothing because the title race is finished now, but it was vital that we won for the second position. ”We proved we shouldn’t be 15 points behind, but they have been more consistent and won a lot of games whereas we probably have given away at least eight points in games we dominated and that has cost us this season.
“But we are happy because we played good football and played very well which is the most important thing.”
“We want to finish the season strongly and this win puts us seven points clear of third with a game in hand so we should be OK.
“There is still another seven games left but the gap between us and United at the end doesn’t mean very much because they could win it by one, ten or 18 points – it won’t change a thing.
“We are at least equal to United this season but they have scored more goals and I think that is the only difference this season.”
United – Sir Alex Ferguson:
“We played well, no question about that, we played some good football,”. “It’s a shame to have lost [after 18 league games unbeaten], particularly in a local derby game because you always want to win those.
“We’ve got seven games to go and it’s a healthy lead. But we’re not taking anything for granted.
“We just have to kick on. The most important thing is to try and win our next game. We’ve got Stoke City on Sunday and it’s a match we want to win and the performance tonight is a good indication.”
“I actually thought we controlled the game in the second half,” Sir Alex added. “A lot of these big games need a goal to open up and it opened up well in the second half, when I thought we played really well.
“It was a very intense game, both sides were really committed, there wasn’t much in it.”
