To suggest the tectonic plates of Manchester football are changing would be premature, though change is afoot.
The Jim Ratcliffe regime at United, controlling sporting affairs while owning only 27.7 per cent of the club, poached City’s chief operations officer Omar Berrada in January. This week, while he sees out his “gardening leave”, the Catalan was able to meet some of his new colleagues.
A significant development considering English football’s increasing obsession with back offices, and the businessmen pulling financial levers. However, football remains a business of immediacy, of life lived in the here and now, and when City welcome United to the Etihad on March 3, the expected outcome is that Pep Guardiola’s team will assert their continuing dominance in Mancunian football.
United’s previous upturn in form was washed away by a poor performance last week against Fulham, after which Erik ten Hag embroiled himself in a row over a TikTok post from the London club. That was accompanied by ten Hag choosing to pick a fight through the media with high-profile, arch-Liverpool man Jamie Carragher.
The strongman act has not convinced many since even when winning matches, his team have been brittle, shelled by 100 shots in their last five Premier League matches.
Next up for United’s overworked defenders, the alliance of Kevin de Bruyne and Erling Haaland – the striker scoring five against Luton in midweek. A heavy defeat could just about seal the fate of ten Hag; Ratcliffe’s faith in the Dutchman is nothing like absolute.
Even a United win, not completely unheard of in recent years, would do little to narrow the gap between the clubs. While Guardiola keeps his laser focus, United can expect to chase shadows for some time yet; Ratcliffe has set success in three years as his target. For City, whatever the local prestige of victory, the Manchester derby represents just the first instalment of a run of fixtures to decide whether they can repeat the glories of last season.
Next week sees a trip to Liverpool, with the month of March closed out by the visit of Arsenal. Added to that comes a round-of-16 second-leg Champions League tie with Copenhagen, though a 3-1 lead makes that look an easy assignment. Newcastle at home in the FA Cup quarter-finals in a fortnight is added to the mix, but those meetings with domestic title rivals will consume attention once United have been dealt with.
City are chasing a double treble that proved beyond United’s greatest modern teams, the Champions League-winning classes of 1999 and 2008. Ratcliffe, while recalling such United glory days in a press call last week, made repeated allusions to the current City, “one of the best teams on the planet”.
He could hardly suggest otherwise, no amount of playing to the red gallery hides the dominance City hold over their rivals. Berrada’s arrival, the courting of Jason Wilcox, who led the City academy that unearthed Phil Foden among others, suggest United’s self-appointed saviour is prepared to borrow something blue to emulate their great rivals.
