Tension Made For A Tepid Affair

Sir Alex Ferguson felt a tense build-up was to blame for a below-par chapter in the City versus United saga on Wednesday night.

The 0-0 stalemate never came close to the thrilling derbies of last season - while the Reds dominated possession, clear-cut opportunities to score goals were hard to come by against a Blues team that seemed to have defeat avoidance as their main aim.

"City are very difficult to beat on their own ground," reflected Sir Alex. "That's obvious from the way they set their stall out in the second half, to make sure they weren't going to lose the game.

"But I think there was maybe too much tension in the build-up to the game for it to be a real spectacle and for it to be as open as people thought it was going to be."

The United manager had mixed feelings about the performance of his side, enjoying the way his team played in general but lamenting the lack of a cutting edge.

"I was pleased with the control we had of the game. Our midfield had a real strangehold in the match and that was important for us. We had some good performances. Nemanja and Rio are both doing great, for example, and although we had to change both full-backs it didn't harm us.

"Some of our football was very good. We were very confident, we had good composure on the ball but we needed to make chances and we needed to win the match.

"In that sense we only had two openings, two chances from open play and that's disappointing for us. In the first half, Patrice Evra made a great run and shot straight at the goalkeeper, and in the second half Dimitar Berbatov had a volley into the goalkeeper's hands. That was it really.

"City made it very difficult for us to break them down. They're very powerful and experienced in that way. Chelsea came here and lost and City were maybe unlucky to lose a man early on here against Arsenal, that might have been a different scoreline otherwise. So they're obviously going to be difficult on their own ground.

"It's a decent result but we don't count draws away from home as our target. Our target was to win the game and I think we had enough possession to do that. But getting that opening to win the match was just beyond us a bit."

Sir Alex Ferguson was speaking to MUTV and Sky Sports.