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Manchester City got back to winning ways with a 3-0 victory against Manchester United at the Etihad with Phil Foden and Erling Haaland doing the damage again.
The mercurial Mancunian with the everyman appeal, there was only ever going to be one match winner in the derby on a day when this city lost one of its greatest ever sportsmen.
Before kick-off at the Etihad, red and blue alike paid tribute to Ricky Hatton with a thunderous round of applause that left TV cameras shaking and viewers back at home feeling dizzy. The Hitman might have been a die-hard Manchester City fan, but his personality and his pugilistic prowess made him a hero across Greater Manchester and beyond. Plenty of those situated in the away end would have been present at some of Hatton's greatest nights.
He was also honest about his troubles away from the ring. Hatton faced his battles outside of his sporting arena, just as Phil Foden has fought his. The boyhood City fan spoke openly and honestly in May about how he had struggled mentally at times last season with issues off the pitch.
So 20 minutes after this ground had rocked to the sound of people singing about 'walking in a Hatton wonderland', it was Foden's wonderland once again. Jeremy Doku got his cross right at the second time of asking and Foden guided a lovely header beyond Altay Bayindir for his first Premier League goal in eight months.
That frustration that built up last season came pouring out as Foden raced towards the fans, engulfing himself in their embrace as he screamed to the heavens. Within minutes of the restart, he was pointing the finger at Bruno Fernandes in a fiery confrontation. Hatton would have loved it.
It is 20 years since the MEN Arena rocked to Hatton's victory over Kostya Tszyu, one of the most iconic sporting nights this city has ever experienced and an evening that propelled him to superstardom. Hatton fights were a break from derbies between the city's footballing behemoths, but these contests have felt lightweight in the last couple of years.
This game has lost its edge since the animosity of the early 2010s, when the Blues were the noisy neighbours and Sir Alex Ferguson the defender-in-chief of United's hegemony. The hope of a renaissance when Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho arrived together in 2016 quickly fizzled out. Those battles failed to live up to the promotional hype, and the fixture is going through a lull at the moment.
If it's not quite what it was on a global scale, then locally it still means as much. The promotion of Foden and Nico O'Reilly to City's starting XI ensured they had a local heartbeat. Ruben Amorim has been doing his best to rid United of theirs.
Erling Haaland's connections with this club run just as deep, and he lashed a shot wide inside the opening 20 seconds. It was a worthy show of intent.
Pep Guardiola's biggest selection call pre-match had been to pick Gianluigi Donnarumma ahead of James Trafford and the £26million goalkeeper showed why within the first few minutes. A long right-hand clawed away Benjamin Sesko's shot and the Italian was commanding every time a cross came into his box.
Once Foden had opened the scoring, City pushed and probed for the second, aware that they had let slip seemingly comfortable positions a little too often for comfort over the previous 12 months.
It took just seven second-half minutes to make the game safe. Foden was integral again, injecting speed into a move by finding Doku. He slid the ball onto Haaland and the Norwegian lifted a cute finish over Bayindir.
Haaland could have had another within a couple of minutes, rounding the under-pressure goalkeeper after United played themselves into trouble, but hitting the post as he stretched to finish. The goalkeepers summed up the difference between these two teams. Red hearts skipped a beat every time Bayindir was involved, but Donnarumma was the epitome of security.
He will never be pinging 70-yard passes to the feet of Haaland, but he knows how to stop the ball from going in his goal. A one-handed save from Bryan Mbeumo's volley was sensational and earned a chest bump from the equally imposing Haaland that might have registered on the Richter scale.
That stop denied United a foothold in the game and within minutes it was worth its weight in goals. The visitors coughed up possession in their own half, Bernardo Silva played in Haaland, running in on goal unopposed from his own half, and the outcome was never in doubt. It was the knockout blow for the blue corner.
That was Haaland's eighth derby goal in nine games against United, and he will be frustrated that he didn't match his hat-trick from this fixture in 2022. It could have been just as messy, with Tijjani Reijnders missing a golden chance to make it four.
United were down for the count and ready to throw in the towel. By the time of the final whistle, the away end was barely a quarter full.
As City's players went on a lap of honour, Guardiola drifted to the back and wrapped his arms around Foden. City have been desperate to get their local hero back to his best, and judging by his smile, he might just be there.
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