WHY SAY ANYTHING?

So it’s nearly that time of the season again folks! Yes, it’s almost upon us. It’s that game that never decides the title, is rarely a classic yet still manages to attract a very large worldwide TV audience.

Maybe that would explain why Sky, (and, no doubt, other TV channels), build this game up as the best anyone is ever likely to see even if they do live to be 200. As we said, it usually isn’t and this one probably won’t be either.

Still it will be interesting to see if Pep Guardiola can continue his march to a second Premier League title in succession or will José put the brakes on it by beating his old foe?

When City host a mid-table team at The Etihad, (yes, Manchester United are a mid-table team), they are usually prohibitive favourites. In September, for example, City were 1/13 to beat Brighton who themselves were only 28/1 to get anything from the game.

For this game though, the line will be much closer as the unpredictability of a derby match comes into play. Even though United sit 10th in the table, (they were second when facing City last season), they will still bring with them a team of star players which, believe it or not, has actually been added to since last time, with Fred and Diogo Dalot now being available to them.

In The Etihad Manchester derby last season, United were 3/1 whilst their neighbours were 4/5 yet we all know what happened in that game!

So what can we expect this time around? Well, it appears that Guardiola only likes one way of playing so he will send his team out to win the game, particularly as they are at home. The only time he has changed his tactics recently, for any game home or away, was for the match at Anfield where he came away with a point which, in light of recent struggles against Liverpool, was a decent result.

Mourinho writes himself a memo to try and remember that his team needs to score in order to win

Mourinho is a relatively unknown quantity at present. Sometimes his team can play really attractive attacking football as they did at Stamford Bridge when they were unlucky not to take three points off Chelsea and other times they can be made to look very average as was the case when they lost to Juventus at Old Trafford recently.

Despite his remarks to the contrary United didn’t deserve anything from that game and were outplayed and out-thought by the Italians both on and off the pitch.

So we can probably expect Mourinho to set up his team in his usual dour way whereby his intention is to not lose the game. As with last season this could all change if United are losing at half-time.

On the other hand, City will be wary even if they go into the break leading by a goal or two. They know from experience what can happen if they switch off and that is definitely what they did last time out.

Guardiola will have them fully focused and he will expect that focus to remain for the whole 90 minutes, not just for the first half.

This remains a difficult one to predict and, nowadays, a drawn derby match is a less frequent occurrence than it used to be. At one stage a draw was the easiest and, in most cases, the correct result to forecast.

Having said all that we actually do think this one will end up level at full-time which will, no doubt, be good news for fans of three London clubs and one from Merseyside.