Blue Moon Rises: 23 Oct 2011 - The day Manchester City destroyed Manchester United’s dynasty

The annals of history are replete with epochal moments, pivotal instances upon which the course of future events are determined.

For British Raj in India, it was the Battle of Plassey after which the East India Company installed the puppet Mir Zafar as the Nawab of Bengal and managed to extricate the other colonial powers from the Indian subcontinent. For Hitler, it was the ill-fated attempt to capture Stalingrad, an unnecessary manoeuvre that would see the Axis eventually lose out in World War II. And for the city of Manchester, the date was 23rd October 2011, when the erstwhile Noisy Neighbours chewed up a footballing dynasty in their own backyard and spat them out.

The oil-rich Abu Dhabi United Group took over City in 2008, it didn’t appear that the Blue Moon would rise over Manchester any time soon with Sir Alex Ferguson still building his last great team. They were bizarre times in every sense of the word when a Chelsea-bound Robinho was literally snatched from Chelsea’s arms and presented as English football’s then most expensive buy.

Of course, no one quite realised it then, but the power would shift in Manchester over the course of the next decade, to the extent that when Jose Mourinho takes his team across town, Manchester City are firmly ensconced as the favourites while Manchester United struggle to make the top 4.

How to destroy a footballing dynasty

All it cost was GBP 2 billion pounds, an oil-rich benefactor and a clear game-plan whose endgame always was to install Pep Guardiola. But if there was one moment when City announced that they would be a force to reckon with, it was humbling at Old Trafford. It was a day of tectonic shifts when a red town was painted blue.

 Every football fan watching will remember when a United team, which had just beat Arsenal 8-2, was ruthlessly dismantled.  It was the footballing equivalent of a nouveau rich neighbour gate-crashing your party, drinking all the booze, peeing in the sink and then writing a cheque to cover the damages. It was the day City’s East India company vanquished the last of the Mughals which had ruled Manchester and English football for so long.

 It was the era of Mario Balotelli, the mercurial Italian forward whose manager Roberto Mancini had admitted that he’d go mad if he had to talk to him every day. Balotelli, who had recently been in the news for setting off crackers in his own home, started proceedings and took off his jersey to show a self-deprecating t-shirt: “Why always me?”

Five more goals would fly pass a hapless David De Gea, newly arrived from Spain, who was probably wondering what was going on, given he had been informed that United were the country’s dominant team.

The victory meant that United and Ferguson could no longer ignore the claims the team that had been bolstered by petrodollars. No one was laughing at City anymore.

As David Silva, one of the mischief makers-in-chief in that particular match said, it was the day City started to earn respect. He said: "It's not fear. I think it's respect. Respect because we’re doing things well. As I said before, United commanded a lot of respect when I first came here. But I think that has changed from when we won there 6-1 and the mentality changed a little bit that day. Now I think we are held in great esteem. You remember a bit of every derby you play in but I think given that it was at United’s ground and the respect that United commanded at that time, it is one that will go down in history."

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The strange thing is United were on course to win the league that season. They were eight points ahead of City with four games remaining before squandering their lead and losing with the league in the most dramatic fashion ever, Sergio Aguero becoming part of folklore after scoring deep into injury time against QPR to hand the Citizens the title on goal difference.

  Over the years, Manchester United had bested every contender that had challenged their dominance. They saw off Jack Walker’s Blackburn, Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal and Abrahimovic’s Chelsea but Ferguson’s exit, coupled with City’s clear plan made sure that the Blue half of Manchester would not only end United’s dominance and start a new dynasty. 

Ferguson managed one last title in 2013 but United were on their way down. City, on the other hand, had been planning meticulously – even bypassing FFP regulations with financial chicanery – to set up a footballing empire that spans the globe.  

Manchester United are striving in the Sisyphean struggle to replace Ferguson. Moyes and Van Gaal were both disasters, and even Mourinho is finding it hard to recapture the lost glory. It appears that Ferguson called the shots for everything and United are extremely clueless how to go about, their expensive signings unable to gel together and form a cohesive unit.

His task is only made to look harder thanks to champagne football Pep Guardiola has his team playing on the other side of the town, the kind former Barcelona player Dani Alves described as better than sex.