More 2-1 reax

Henry Winter, Daily Telegraph

Neville’s club know they are locked in a dogfight of gathering danger. Whether United find themselves engaged in a scrap to prevent a shift of power can only be properly assessed after a year or two, but failing to hold on to Tévez now looks an almighty own goal. Whatever the champions’ concerns about Tévez’s financial demands, whatever Sir Alex Ferguson’s scepticism about the Argentine’s impact in the major matches, there can now be no doubt that United erred badly in not retaining his substantial services. He makes a difference.

Where some cast quizzical aspersions over the adhesiveness of Tévez’s first touch, his remarkable work ethic more than compensates. Few flaws could be detected in the emphatic way he converted his first-half penalty, while his headed second bore all the hallmarks of a serial poacher.

Oliver Kay, The Times

In many other respects, Manchester City and, above all, a vengeful Carlos Tévez, went a long way towards proving Ferguson wrong and silencing the barbs that have been coming across the fence with more regularity and more ferocity than even the United manager appears to realise. All talk? Not good enough? Small club? Small mentality? Tévez overpriced? None of that sounds quite so convincing this morning.

Matt Dickinson, The Times

It had already said everything about the potential power swing in English football that Sir Alex Ferguson — a man who should be measuring his final years in titanic European Cup duels with Real Madrid and AC Milan — should be willing his team with all his might against City in a Carling Cup semi-final.

The United manager would love to have risen above this game, to have concentrated on bigger prizes, but the uprising is so strong, the shifts in football’s tectonic plates sufficiently alarming that he had no choice than to take on City with his very best XI (ie Wayne Rooney, United’s one-man attack, leading the line).

Daniel Taylor, guardian.co.uk

This was the moment Tevez had been craving since his defection from Old Trafford and the lingering sense of bad feeling could be seen in the exuberant way he chose to celebrate compared to the respect he has afforded West Ham when scoring against another of his former clubs. Tevez was so pumped up he made a beeline for the touchline where Gary Neville had been warming up and informed his former team-mate (imagine Rod Hull with an invisible Emu) that he talked too much. Neville had said on the eve of this match that he could not argue with Ferguson's assessment that Tevez was over-priced at £25.5m.