Sancho on target – but just look at what he’s missing
JADON SANCHO finally had a taste of what it is like to play – and score – at the Etihad but he must have been left with a fleeting feeling of how it might have been had he stayed at Manchester City.
He might have got to play with a genius like Kevin De Bruyne for a start. He might have got to be a part of a side that plays with such luxurious fluidity that to watch them in full flow is like falling under a spell.
And he might have escaped the humiliation of chasing shadows for the last 15 harrowing minutes yesterday when City toyed with United like a sky-blue cat with an unfortunate shrew.
Yesterday was the first time Sancho had faced City since leaving the club five years ago and he will have learnt that this timeless Manchester melodrama is not at present a contest of equals.
United were as badly beaten up by City’s velvet gloves yesterday under Ralf Rangnick as they were under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s care earlier in the season.
For Sancho it made for a painful reunion.
Rejecting a contract offer from Pep Guardiola and signing for Borussia Dortmund for £7m as a teenager looked a headstrong move at the time.
He made it work, rising to England international status during a successful spell in Germany and returning to the Premier League as a £73m star.
But glamorous life in the red half of
Manchester at the biggest club in the world has not proven to be as advertised.
It has been a turbulent time in which to join United.
After a slow start, Sancho has come good of late and his goal yesterday was a beauty.
He picked up Paul Pogba’s crossfield pass and, using the overlapping Bruno Fernandes as a decoy, cut inside KyleWalker and Rodri before bending a lovely shot beyond Ederson’s left hand and into the City goal.
His shrug-shouldered celebration was low key but sufficient to enrage the City fans who had booed him from his first touch.
But once he had wasted a good chance for a second equaliser in the 41st minute, spooning his shot over the bar from 15 yards, Sancho – and United – disappeared as an attacking entity.
United didn’t have a single shot in the second half.
By the end, confused and bedraggled, it looked like they had simply given up.