Echoing from the Etihad, the mischievous melody of "Just like the Scousers, you're stuck in the past" taunted the crumbling red dynasties of the North West with its implied prophesy of a bold blue future. A Kaleidoscopic future of untapped footballing possibility speeding toward us like a hallucinogenic magic carpet wheeling through a shifting Dali-esque landscape of melting realities.

From the start, Utd's midfield stood like sentinels to yesterday lost in the inexorable flow of time, while City's rush to the future conceded nothing to sentimentality, least of all the ball. Over the course of the opening 12 minutes, Utd, flickering like the last light of memory, were restricted to 9% of possession and completed just 5 passes. By then it was 1-0 and irrespective of what the garish Tinder hoardings suggested, already a mismatch.

City's opening stanza was almost Homeric, unfolding like an Iliad in miniature, blue hordes laid siege to Mourinho's Troy, forcing Utd to retreat from 4-3-3 to 4-5-1. Sterling probed with rapier like conviction, Bernardo Silva toyed with the opposition and Aguero might have landed a first blow were it not for an aberrant fresh air swing of the leg. The role of Achilles was reserved, as ever, for David Silva, whose feet, twinkling like starlight stolen from the sky, mesmerised his benighted foes.

After Silva's opener, the game, as if content to be swept toward an already inevitable conclusion, drifted on a lazy tide of acceptance. Occasionally Utd attempted to press but their effort was restricted too easily to moments, the chronic imbalance of the side writ large in the lonely spaces separating attack from midfield. A midfield which resembled an infant's messy collage with lashings of glue applied in the vain hope of holding it all together.

But the pieces didn't stick. Fellaini and Matic like autumnal oaks stood tall and imposing but wilted into diffident shades of brown as City robbed them of their life force. Herrera playing with haunted feet was tormented throughout as misplaced pass followed misplaced pass into the foreboding night. By comparison, Fernandinho, bestrode the pitch with the impunity of a South American dictator, calmly asserting his authority at the merest hint of dissent.

The tactical battle, if there was one, was conceded early, as Utd slumped into the diesel powered chug of resignation. Mourinho seemed to treat City as a metaphysical problem and in trying to answer "what is football?" he fell into the trap of overthinking. Worse, when the overwrought plan to man-mark both Silvas patently failed, he seemed to stop thinking altogether as if the ever larger cracks in his genius had been filled with fear.

Aguero made it 2-0 soon after the break. Lingard's miscontrol sparked a chain reaction which fizzed between Fernandinho, Bernardo Silva and Mahrez before exploding from the Argentine's boot into the roof of Utd's net. As if ruing that they'd resorted to the nuclear option, City flashed V signs, grew their hair and moved to San Francisco; they became charitable. At 2-1, the game became a contradiction in terms; Utd were back in it, without really being in it at all.

City's third, courtesy of Gundogan, changed that. The goal itself played like a training ground challenge devised by Pep; "you can't score until everyone passes the ball at least once". The effrontery wasn't in the sheer number of passes, 44 in total, it was in the fact that City were no longer testing themselves against Utd, City were testing themselves against City.

Much as such audacity delights the eyes it shouldn't blind them. Last week brought to light revelations concerning City's chicanery in sidestepping UEFA's Financial Fair Play Regulations. Amidst leaked disclosures evidencing bald financial doping was a chilling remark that says much of the true nature of Manchester City. After learning of the death of Jean-Luc Dehaene, who had been among UEFA's chief investigators, City's chief lawyer Simon Cliff sent an email to a colleague; its message, "1 down, 6 to go".