For the footballing purists, there was never going to be any winner in a match between two teams at differing ends of the footballing pyramid who have got to where they are as a result of their wealthy benefactors.
Yet the sight of Ryan Giggs back in an elite-level dugout 18 months after domestic abuse charges against him were dropped, charges Giggs has always denied, took the distasteful feeling surrounding this FA Cup tie to another level entirely.
Manchester City ran out comfortable winners, even though Pep Guardiola uncharacteristically shuffled his pack more than he would normally do, with Jack Grealish netting his first goal since December 2023 and a whole host of youngsters impressing on their big chance in the City team.
Yet there was as much focus on who had made their way onto the pitch pre-match than those emblazoned in club colours later on.
Even given Salford’s depleted coaching numbers, the sight of Giggs, a supposed “director of football” in a club tracksuit alongside manager Karl Robinson surveying the champions’ warm-up rituals tells you more about the former Manchester United star’s unsavoury attempts to reintegrate himself into the public eye, quietly, as if nothing has happened.
Giggs’ new-found omnipresence on the Salford bench overshadowed a day that, on paper, should have been one to remember for a club competing in the Northern Premier League Division One North, a now-defunct level eight of the pyramid, a decade ago.
Not that the Class of 92, so often keen to tell you that beating teams in League Two means more to them than winning the Treble, were all there to see it. Only Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt were in the stands at the Etihad, with Gary Neville preferring to go on a ski trip and David Beckham, who had been in Manchester earlier in the week, staying away.
Perhaps they had foreseen the humbling experience that was to come.
When two of those City players coming in costing £150m between them, what chance did even a team with six wins and six clean sheets in a row stand? Eight minutes in, after fine work from Matheus Nunes, Grealish waited for the perfect moment before releasing Jeremy Doku, with the out-of-favour winger slotting into the far corner to get the champions up and running.
Then it was the moment for the incoming youngsters to step forward. The impressive Nunes squared for Divin Mubama – a striker signed from West Ham in the summer who will almost certainly be the latest starlet City eventually sell for profit – to score his first goal for the club, effectively putting the tie to bed, before another more established fledgling talent, Nico O’Reilly, netted his first City strike before half time.
Giggs remained deep in conversation with Alex Bruce, son of former team-mate Steve, and Robinson on the bench as the second half got underway. Quite what they were plotting, at that stage, was a mystery.
City soon added a fourth through Grealish from the penalty spot, his first since December 2023, after the struggling maverick was felled, while James McAtee, who is slowly working his way into Guardiola’s thinking on a more regular basis, getting on the end of a Doku cross to add a fifth.
By the time Doku had stepped to make it six from the penalty spot, most in attendance had their minds elsewhere. McAtee’s seventh and eighth to complete his hat-trick had the Etihad doing the Poznan. Giggs’ reappearance meant in reality there is very little to celebrate.
