The Tameside Radio presenter and Manchester City supporter reflects on an extraordinary week for the Blues - including a dominant derby success for the club's Reserves.

In a six-day period, I’ve just seen Manchester City score 19 goals without reply.

If you ever doubted the dominance that City are capable of, you got to witness most of it for yourself, though you may not have been at the Under-21s game, which was the third of those games that I attended. 

First the Blues tore RB Leipzig apart in the Champions League, with the unstoppable Erling Haaland scoring five of City’s seven, before being taken off by manager Pep Guardiola. Personally, I’d hoped he’d get a chance to complete a double hat-trick, but his work had already been done. After drawing the first leg of the tie 1-1 in Germany, it was much more convincing at the Etihad Stadium. 

Next up were Vincent Kompany’s Burnley. The Clarets are runaway leaders of the Championship and are certain to be in the Premier League next season. There’s an argument to say that it was Kompany’s audition to succeed Guardiola, at some stage, as City manager. Pep is clearly impressed by his former captain’s first season as a boss in English football, and spoke very highly of him at the press conferences before and after the Blues easily dispatched their opponents from the FA Cup. 

Once again, Haaland was the toast of the fans after scoring yet another hat-trick, but City’s task was much easier because Burnley tried to go toe to toe with the Blues, thereby leaving themselves wide open to the superior quality at Pep’s disposal. Many have suggested that City’s superiority, at this moment in football history, is purely down to money. I’d be naïve to suggest that the massive investment from their owners has been highly significant, but that doesn’t explain the events I witnessed at Under-21 level on Sunday. 

I was at the CFA to watch City’s Reserves take on Manchester United’s youngsters and yet again it was an emphatic home win, with the Blues emphatic winners.

City were 2-0 up within a few minutes and added a third after the rattled Reds had a player sent off. United reacted by taking two players off. One of their substitutes was former Tottenham and Hull City midfielder Tom Huddlestone, who is player coach of United's Under-21s. At the age of 36, as an over-age player, he went straight into defence as the Reds gave up any thoughts of trying to fight their way back into the game. They settled into a 5-4-0 formation in the hope of stopping City scoring more. They failed. City beat United 6-0. 

What I learnt from that game is that the way City play, which is to dominate possession with one and two touch football at speed, is the secret to their success, not the transfer fee and wages the club pays. United’s Under-21s will have been recruited in much the same way that City’s have. The difference appears to be the strong philosophy of how the game should be played, brought in by Guardiola. 

The system is the key. At first-team level, the club can recruit the very best and, in Haaland and Julian Alvarez, they recruited two of the very best. Over at United, they’ve spend as much as City, but players like Antony and Jadon Sancho, who were signed for bigger fees, strike me as individually talented but not part of such a slick system as the one we see at all levels at City. 

It’s certainly been a great few days to be a Blue, but I take nothing for granted. The business end of the season is fast approaching. Hopefully Pep’s brilliant system will prove to be decisive and successful. It’s great to be a Blue!

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