Manchester City's Loss to United Was a Soaring Victory for Robert Mancini

Sunday's dizzying FA Cup epic between Manchester City and United left football writers to draw pretty much any conclusion we wanted. There were storylines all over the pitch, and to pick a theme was to ignore at least a dozen others.

United answered their 6-1 humiliation at Old Trafford with a victory few expected. City played with 10 men as if they had 12, and almost denied them. Sir Alex Ferguson made Paul Scholes his Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney scored and celebrated wildly against the team they say is out to buy him, then upset the manager who'd own him. And that's barely the half of it.

It was United who progressed to Round 4, but having spent a full 24 hours digesting events at The Etihad, my head emerged on Monday focused not on their defiant victory, but on Roberto Mancini's cool and considered response in the face of adversity.

At 3-0 down, and with United threatening a deluge against his 10 men, Mancini didn't panic. He calmed his team down, focused their minds and played the percentages with his tactics. The result was a moral victory City fans will be hoping sets the tone for the business end of their season. Seldom has a manager gained more in defeat against his team's most bitter rivals than Mancini did on Sunday.

At the death, United were hanging on. If the first half was an ode to all-conquering United teams past, the second was a wholly unconvincing resistance effort to betray their every weakness in the present. Despite their man advantage, Ferguson's team were defensively vulnerable, and once again lacked leadership when they needed it most.

"We made them better than they were," Ferguson said after the game. "It was ridiculous. We were so careless in the second half. We took our foot off the pedal from a position when we should have battered them. They waited for us to make mistakes. We made them and it turned it into a score it shouldn't have been. This does us no good [in terms of the title] as it was a careless performance. We should have been home and dry."

In 90 minutes was the story of United's 2011-12 season told. Ferguson's team were at times irresistible going forward—as they were in the 8-2 win against Arsenal, and the 5-0 hammerings of Fulham, Wigan and Bolton. But just when you thought they'd got their groove back, so followed the kind of fallibility that marked that 6-1 loss to City, recent defeats to Blackburn and Newcastle and their performances in the group stages of the Champions League.

The reintroduction of Scholes said it all. United are still a force, but there's something missing and Ferguson knows it. There's no doubt he thinks the 37-year-old can still play, but deep down you wonder if the grand old master sees his true worth as a figurehead to focus some positivity and belief—in both the fans and the players around him. Is Ferguson getting desperate? Only the performances of Scholes, will tell. But it's certainly the move of a manager clawing for answers.

United weren't short of them in a blistering first 45 on Sunday. City were blown away in the first half, but there was really no shame in that. Rooney's header was brilliant, Danny Welbeck's finish equally as equally pinpoint. Only the foul Welbeck drew from Aleksandar Kolarov smacked of poor judgement.

It doesn't matter how good you are, sometimes you're going to get overrun. The question is how long you let it go on for, and how well you respond. Barcelona allowed Real Madrid 20 minutes at The Bernabeu in December. City gave United 45.

Mancini's team emerged from the break in a 3-5-1 formation that worked like a dream. Not only were United frustrated and outnumbered in midfield, but they were flexible enough to get forward in numbers on the break. But their comeback was about much more than tactics. It was about a strength of character that proved once and for all they have what it takes to win the title.

Ferguson has gone back in time for the boost his squad needs in January. Mancini will likely go shopping. It's a brave man who bets against the fiercely determined Italian based on his team's showing on Sunday. They might have lost the battle, but unless United can capture City's fierce resolve, Mancini's men will win the war.