Start with the officiating, since everyone else already has. Erling Haaland's 60th-minute winner at Old Trafford was flagged offside on the field, then overturned by VAR on the reasoning that City's Enzo Fernández wasn't interfering with play. Pro Ref, the Premier League's referees' body, has since admitted the call was wrong, saying the VAR "did not recognise the likely impact of his position and should have recommended an on-field review." Michael Carrick called it "worrying." Lisandro Martínez called it an "injustice." Gary Neville said the officials got it wrong before the apology even landed. All of that is true, and Manchester United have every right to be furious about it.
What's getting buried under the VAR outrage is this: United had Phil Foden and the rest of City down to ten men from the 23rd minute, over half the match still to play, and they still didn't find a way through. Marcus Rashford hit the woodwork. Kobbie Mainoo hit the woodwork. Those are the kind of missed chances that get filed away as bad luck when a team goes on to win, and get replayed on a loop when it doesn't.
That's the real story of this derby. A one-man advantage for the better part of an hour is not a small thing in a rivalry fixture. City, now managed by Enzo Maresca in the first derby since Pep Guardiola's departure, absorbed that disadvantage and still found a way to score. United, with Carrick trying to build his own identity as permanent manager, had the extra body and the run of play and came away with nothing to show for it beyond a legitimate grievance.
Grievances don't show up in the table. Through four matchdays this season, City sit level with Arsenal on maximum points, while United have taken just four points from their opening four matches. Both are small samples this early in the campaign, and nobody should be writing anyone's obituary or coronation off a September afternoon. But if United want to point at the officials as the reason they're behind in September, they should probably look at the finishing first.
Separate from the controversy, there's something worth saying about Haaland: this was his ninth Premier League goal against United. He's now the competition's leading scorer in this fixture. Whatever you think of how City got the goal, that's a striker who keeps finding a way to punish this particular opponent.
The apology from Pro Ref matters. It should matter, and United fans, already unhappy enough with ownership to hang a banner over the tunnel about how they're treated, have every reason to feel aggrieved twice over. But an apology doesn't hand back the two points, and it doesn't explain what happened at the other end of the pitch when United had the numbers to make the officiating irrelevant. They didn't, and that's the harder conversation Carrick has to have this week.
