Erling Haaland's goal in Sunday's Manchester derby should not have stood, and the Premier League said so out loud less than 24 hours later, the kind of admission that changes nothing about the scoreline and everything about how City's win at Old Trafford gets remembered. The league's officiating body confirmed the refereeing error, City kept the three points, and United kept the receipt. Nobody is replaying the fixture. That is the whole ruling.

Here is the part that makes the apology worth more than it looks: the Premier League does not compensate a wronged club, it manages a broadcast product, and a controversial derby result that gets discussed for a week is worth more to that product than a clean one that gets forgotten by Tuesday. Manchester City does not need the sympathy. The Premier League does not need to be right. It needs the derby trending, and Sunday, being wrong did the job better than being right ever could.