England’s Manchester (AP) — On Sunday, Manchester City defeated Manchester United 3-1 in a one-sided derby that highlighted the division between the two Premier League rivals. Phil Foden spearheaded the comeback following an incredible error by Erling Haaland.

After a rasping long-range goal from Marcus Rashford in the eighth minute and a shocking error from the prolific Haaland from a distance of only two meters, City was behind 1-0 at the break.

After Haaland’s earlier error, Foden scored the equalizer with a rising drive in the 56th minute and then finished off the game with a low strike off an inside feed from Julian Alvarez in the 80th.
“I always thought he was going to score goals.” The 23-year-old English attacker Foden’s double this season has brought him to 17 goals in all competitions, a career-high, and City manager Pep Guardiola said of him, “Right now, he is winning games.”

“This season’s player of the year is him. This season, no one has shown us as much resolve as he has.

Haaland still had time to make up for his missed opportunity, as he scored the third goal in stoppage time with City’s 27th shot of the game after a defensive blunder.
After celebrating with Foden after scoring his goal, which was his league-high 18th of the season, Haaland fell to the ground in mock relief. Both players wounded their rivals once more after scoring hat tricks in City’s 6-3 victory over United the previous season.

With 11 games remaining in a title competition that appears to be going down to the wire, second-place City dropped one point behind Liverpool. The three leading contenders for the title would once again be separated by two points if Arsenal defeated Sheffield United on Monday as predicted.
In contrast, United has lost ground in the race to qualify for the Champions League. United is currently six points behind Spurs and eleven behind Villa. After wins on Saturday are fourth-place Aston Villa and fifth-place Tottenham.

The game’s lopsided outcome demonstrated that Jim Ratcliffe, whose INEOS business assumed control of United’s football operations upon the billionaire’s entrance as a co-owner, would have his work cut out for him in terms of getting the team back to being a major player in the English and European leagues.
Last week, he discussed shoving City and Liverpool “off their perch” within three years. With this evidence, that might be overly optimistic.

At Etihad Stadium, United was outclassed, with the majority of the encounter taking place in the visitors’ half, like an FA Cup between a Premier League team and a lower-division rival. United just managed one shot on goal, which went to Rashford, while City controlled 74% of the play overall.
There was still a chance that United could hold out before Foden struck his incredible first goal. Even that goal was controversial, as Kyle Walker’s foul on Rashford before City broke through and equalized was not called, much to United manager Erik ten Hag’s ire.

Even if it was possibly gentle, Ten Hag claimed to have made contact.
Not long after Ten Hag hurled his water bottle onto the floor, Foden fired a shot that soared beyond Andre Onana.

The team’s hopes of winning an unprecedented fourth consecutive league title would have been severely damaged by another tie, which would have occurred two weeks after City was defeated 1-1 at home by Chelsea. However, Foden and, rather belatedly, Haaland made sure that wouldn’t happen.
Therefore, City will be playing a seismic match at Anfield on Sunday with the potential to deal a major blow to Liverpool in the title chase and to be right on their heels. Since suffering a 1-0 defeat at Villa on December 6, City has gone 19 games without a loss across all competitions.

Ratcliffe begins work on a massive rebuilding project, and in its current form, United can only dream of such a record.
The play of Onana, who rejected City with a string of incredible saves in the second half and was powerless to stop Foden’s breakthrough, was one thing that went well for United.

One more was the caliber of Rashford’s goal, which was a thunderbolt from 30 meters after Bruno Fernandes was let past City’s defense by Onana’s long clearance.

However, after that, traffic was only going in one direction, and United was unable to stop the blue wave.

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