Fans always knew that Manchester United and Manchester City would take their blockbuster derby match seriously, but nobody expected things to spill over in the tunnel quite like they did.

With United essentially needing victory to maintain realistic hopes of the Premier League, Jose Mourinho rolled the dice and played an attacking line-up at Old Trafford, to no avail.

A meticulous and well-organised City side proved just too good with David Silva and Nicolas Otamendi cancelling out a Marcus Rashford strike from two set pieces.

While, admittedly, the result is a massive one for City, their celebrations didn't go down well with Mourinho and his players after the match.

Tempers had already flared in the immediate aftermath yet the audible celebrations and music reportedly sparked another confrontation from the two dressing rooms.

Mikel Arteta was left bloodied by a projectile, Romelu Lukaku was trying to climb over colleagues and Mourinho's beeline to the City players sparked an argument with Ederson.

Police officers were eventually stationed outside the dressing rooms and the FA will investigate the matter, although a narrative was not present in Michael Oliver's match report.

It's quite the soap opera and it's becomingly increasingly difficult to put a finger on the exact chronology of the episode.

Nevertheless, the Daily Mail sought to clear up the situation with a sprawling report on Monday night that even offered a detailed map and annotations to spell out the events.

Although a lot of the information disclosed was already known, the report shed great detail on the aftermath of Mourinho's approach to the Manchester City dressing room.

After things turned ugly, the message: 'the gaffer's been hit by a bottle,' was relayed to the players by a Manchester United coach and they certainly acted upon it.

According to the report, a 'marauding, bare-chested' Marcos Rojo was the first player to back up his manager with a troop of Antonio Valencia, Marcus Rashford, Axel Tuanzebe, Ander Herrera and Luke Shaw backing him up.

Sounds like City can at least be thankful that Rojo didn't send in the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Nemanja Matic, that's for sure.

Nevertheless, for all the drama, it's the Citizens that had the last laugh with a result that extends their Premier League lead to an almighty 11 points,

No launched water bottle or Lukaku gymnastics can quite atone for that.

Do you think there's any chance of Manchester United catching City? Have your say in the comments section below.