In the first meeting between the 2 arch-rivals this season, Man City came out on top at Old Trafford by a 2-1 scoreline when Henrikh Mkhitaryan was handed the key start by Jose Mourinho and unfortunately did not cover himself in glory as the Red-Devils were out-classed by their City rivals and Pep’s men ran out winners. This led to Mkhitaryan spending an extended period of time on the sidelines due to both fitness issues and form as Jose Mourinho took sometime to be convinced that the Armenian playmaker was ready for the Premier League.
Fortunately for both the player and the club the “mighty Mkhi” put his head down and worked hard to regain the trust of his manager without showing any signs of a bad attitude and earned recalls to the line-up and has since gone on to show just why Jose shelled out the big-bucks to Dortmund to get his man.
Mkhitaryan is now United’s joint 2nd leading goal-scorer behind only the mighty Zlatan tied with Marcos Rashford and Juan Mata on 10 goals. So we can imagine that now since Jose trusts Henrikh the boss will give the playmaker an opportunity to redeem himself and exorcise the ghosts of his unfortunate early season display against City.
The last time these two sides met was in the EFL Cup which United of course went on to win. The Red-Devils won courtesy of a 1-0 with Juan Mata supplying the winner in a game which United deserved to win. So the season series is even at 1 each.
The last time the 2 rivals faced each other in the Premier League on a Thursday was way back in November 1994, as United triumphed 5-0 courtesy of a sublime Andrei Kanchelskis hat-trick.
The fixtures between the 2 managers certainly favours Pep Guardiola as Jose Mourinho is winless in his last 4 Premier League games against Man City with 2 draws and 2 losses and this poor run came after winning 6 Premier League clashes vs City between December 2005 and February 2014.
Looking back to their history further a field and Mourinho has only pulled off 4 wins in his 18 meetings with Pep Guardiola while only managing 6 draws with a pretty dodgy 8 losses, but crucially the Portuguese manager did of course win the last meeting with his Spanish opponent – which came just months ago in October when as mentioned United registered a deserved 1-0 win in the EFL Cup .
Pep Guardiola could become the fourth manager to win both home and away Manchester derbies in a debut top-flight season after John Bentley, Sven-Göran Eriksson and Manuel Pellegrini.
Wayne Rooney has scored 11 goals in Manchester derbies (all comps) – more than any other player in the history of this fixture – but hasn’t scored in any of his last five but we can’t forget his stunning overhead kick which won the Derby back at Old Trafford on February 12, 2011 to secure the United win with the scores tied at 1-1. Rooney is in form it would seem after returning to fitness as he scored vs Burnley on Sunday and you can see the club captain playing a role for Jose on Thursday night either as a starter or more likely from the bench.
Sergio Aguero has now scored in five successive Premier League appearances for Manchester City and could equal his best such-run in the competition with a goal in this match (6 appearances in a row between April-May 2016).
Aguero has scored 8 goals in 10 competitive appearances for Manchester City against Manchester United but has failed to score in his last 2 games against them and United will be keen to extend this streak but will have to rely on the partnership of Daley Blind and Eric Bailly to keep the Argentinian quiet with their plethora of centre-half injuries but United did keep a clean sheet on Sunday so have something to build on.
City have only lost 1 of their 15 home league games this season, but only neighbours Man Utd with 9 have drawn more home games than them in the top flight this season with 6.
Only Alan Shearer (190) has scored in more different Premier League games than Wayne Rooney (149 – level with Frank Lampard & Andrew Cole).
Manchester United are now unbeaten in 23 successive league matches and if they avoid defeat in this match they’ll equal their longest-ever unbeaten run in the top-flight within a single season (24 games in 2010-11) which shows how hard they’ve been to beat despite literally having a constant injury-forced rotation of central defenders and conceding the 2nd least goals with 24 only 2 more than Spurs.
We think that this match is a pivotal match for both clubs (obviously) and the tactics of the managers and the personnel they select will be most key. Based on United’s recent consistent form and Jose’s inspired selection of the right men coupled with his tactics for each game looking at the Chelsea match and the Anderlecht game in particular we think that United will be pushed to the limit and the game will be a see-saw battle. Therefore we can easily see the game ending in a 2-2 tie but we are gonna go out on a limb and predict a 3-1 United victory with “Mkhi” redeeming himself and scoring along with goals from the suddenly in-form Martial plus the on-fire Marcus Rashford who all seem to be giving Jose what he needs from them as it clear that Jose’s methods work and Mkhi, Luke Shaw, Marcus Rashford and now Anthony Martial seem to be understanding that now as we recently wrote. So we think United will continue their winning run and claim the season series from their across town rivals.
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