When Mario Balotelli lifted his shirt to reveal the famous message – "Why always me?" – at Old Trafford, it was predictable that he should get a yellow card. He would later lose his green card, in effect, when Manchester City lost patience with their unpredictable Italian and shipped him back to Milan.
Balotelli has been scoring regularly since his winter-window move back to Italy, showing the form of that October day in 2011 when Manchester United were slaughtered 6-1 on their own ground and Balotelli – along with Edin Dzeko, who is expected to leave the Emirates Stadium at the end of the season – scored twice. Was it really less than 18 months ago? It seems longer. The wheel has turned full circle. United are top dogs in Manchester again, and that means top dogs in England.
They’ll be champions whatever happens in the upcoming derby. Even if City win on their neighbors’ turf again, the gap between the clubs will be 12 points with seven games to go and United are way too consistent to squander that advantage. Consistency, indeed, has won them this title, which will be their 13th under Sir Alex Ferguson and 20th in all. Even more importantly, it will be their first since City grabbed it with almost the final kick of last season.
While City have dropped points – tying 11 games has been even more costly than losing five – United have somehow found the winning formula. It’s often by the narrowest margin. Of their 25 victories in the Premier League, fifteen wins have been by a single goal. If they needed a 1-0 result, Ferguson’s men would scrape it. If they needed to score four to beat three – as proved the case at Reading or at home to Newcastle – they did it.
And at the Etihad Stadium we saw perhaps the best example of United’s ability somehow to turn a tie into a win when, after City had fought back to equality at 2-2, Robin van Persie’s deflected free-kick beat Joe Hart late – agonisingly so for the blue majority of the crowd. Yes, the goal was a bit of a freak – there was a cruel deflection off a leg Samir Nasri had waved at the ball – but somehow the whole occasion screamed that City had regressed since Sergio Aguero’s title-clinching winner against Queens Park Rangers, while United had regrouped.
At that stage there was talk that Roberto Mancini, after conducting the 2011/2 campaign skilfully, had upset his players by switching to three at the back in the fashionable Italian style. Then he reverted to a back four and other problems surfaced. Balotelli was a big one. In the end his body language persuaded even Mancini, who had done everything to encourage him to settle in England, that he had to go.
Then there was tension with England goalkeeper Hart. And with captain Vincent Kompany, whom Mancini criticized for returning from injury with Belgium when he’d been missing club games. Plus the moody Nasri, whose bright performance against Newcastle recently caused Mancini to joke that "I’d like to give him a punch" – for not doing it more regularly. The coach had earlier said of the former Arsenal midfielder: "Some players think it’s enough to do what they did the previous season when you have to improve every day."
None of this would matter if City were punching their weight. But despite massive investment by the Abu Dhabi owners they were knocked out of the Champions League at the group stage for the second successive season and now have only the FA Cup to aspire to. It was reported Sunday that Mancini must win the Cup – they meet Chelsea in the semi-finals next Sunday – to be sure of staying in his job next season. Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain, the former Barcelona executive who runs the club day by day, will want a bit of assurance before they release an expected $150 million for summer transfer business.
Ferguson, meanwhile, marches merrily on at 71. He points to the youthful depth of his squad and says: "Our record over the past 20 years or so tells you we’re not going away." Another factor on United’s side is Financial Fair Play, which favors clubs with big stadiums – Old Trafford holds 76,000 to the Etihad’s 48,000 – and highly developed revenue streams.
Although United were unlucky in some ways to lose to Real Madrid in the Champions League’s first knockout round, they have not been great this season. But they have done more than enough in a less than vintage Premier League season to look the uncrowned champions from the second game – they lost the first one to Everton – onwards. While Van Persie’s arrival from Arsenal was the key to the first half of the season, squad discipline has done the rest.
It has been more of a procession than a triumph and it looks as if Ferguson may have seen off yet another rival. Why always him? I think we know the answer by now.
