The post-match knocking of Manchester United following their goalless draw at Liverpool has been quite stunning.
I even heard some Manchester City fans crowing, ‘We want to win games and win them well’.
Which is rubbish — I don’t remember it being about style over substance for them two decades ago when they were scraping through third-tier finals at Wembley.
City just wanted to get up the leagues back then and they didn’t care how they did it.
Yet here they are, 20 years and a billionaire sheikh later, basking in the gloriousness of life in Pepville.
It may well be pretty nice at the moment there but I will tell them this.
If I was still a player I’d have been much happier with a 0-0 draw away from home against our biggest rivals than scoring seven but conceding two to a Stoke team who will finish in the bottom half of the table.
What did we actually learn about City at the weekend? Not a lot.
We know they’ll score fives, sixes and sevens at times this season but we also know they’ll concede goals that, really, they shouldn’t.
It doesn’t matter if you win 10-4 or 1-0 you still earn the same number of points, but ultimately it will be the number of clean sheets you keep that win you the title.
So what did we learn about United at the weekend?
We learned that they can go to Anfield for their toughest away fixture of the season, take on a team with three of four of the best attacking players in the Premier League, keep them at bay and grind out a result.
That shows they have the character and the steeliness that will take them a long way, and even though they didn’t win there’s still only two points between them and the noisy neighbours.
Having played in games between Liverpool and Manchester United, I can tell you how important it is not to lose.
And if Saturday’s clash had ended up 4-3 to Liverpool, no United fan would have come away saying, ‘Oh well, at least we played the United way’.
No, they’d have been absolutely miserable about but as it was they could not their heads and say, ‘Decent point, that’.
So anyone who slags off Mourinho for the job he did at the weekend is a football illiterate.
And if you think Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson never went into a game thinking, ‘Even if it means not playing the United way we don’t lose this fixture’, then you are mistaken.
You have to understand the nuances of football to understand the away point United picked up at the weekend was a great one.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the football City have played this season — not least on Saturday — has been amazing, absolutely superb.
But what will determine Pe Guardiola’s success is not how they play, it’s whether or not they can get one more point than the team in second.
That isn’t a given while they are conceding two goals in games against teams such as Stoke.