Key events
It’s only a few months since United’s then manager, Erik ten Hag, described the idea of Rashford being dropped as “crazy”, and that “I would almost say that, as a person, you are not OK when you bring such speculation … I’m very happy with Marcus, with everything. With his defending part, offensive, he performs very good.”
A bit more from Amorim on the Rashford/Garnacho situation:
Of course the context is difficult, we have to win games and we have a difficult situation. I pay attention to everything – the way you eat, the way you put on your clothes – then I have to decide. I have a lot of players to choose from and today I’ve made my choice.
Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, has confirmed that Matheus Nunes will start at left-back for Manchester City because “he’s the only option we have”.
Ruben Amorim says, smiling, that the decision to leave out Rashford and Garnacho was down to what he has seen from them in “training, performance [and] engagement with teammates”, which feels quietly damning.
We tried to evaluate everything – training, performance, game performance, engagement with teammates. Everything is on the line when we analyse and try to choose the players. It’s my selection. I don’t want to send a message, it’s simply evaluation. Everyone understands my decision.
“It’s just simple selection” 💬
Ruben Amorim explains his decision to not include Marcus Rashford or Alejandro Garnacho in his side 😳 pic.twitter.com/a9CdgPmugV
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 15, 2024
Meanwhile Jonathan Wilson has written about Ruben Amorim’s task at Manchester United:
There was a moment, at about 5.30pm last Saturday, when there seemed a genuine danger that Manchester United might be turning into a serious football club. But it took only two minutes and the sight of Nikola Milenkovic soaring above Lisandro Martínez for that facade to collapse. Two further weird goals later – the sort of accidents that speak of a profound carelessness – and it was clear that the banter era still has some time to run.
That was only the beginning. By the following morning, Dan Ashworth had been mutual-consented out of the club: five months’ gardening leave followed by five months of actual work, a truly magnificent piece of living satire, even before you consider the compensation United had to pay Newcastle to secure him and the hefty payoff he must have received.
Much more here:
I’ve got some pre-match reading for you, starting with this piece by Tom Bassam about Pep Guardiola’s derby record.
Marcus Rashford has played in all 15 of Manchester United’s Premier League games this season but that run ends today: he and Alejandro Garnacho, with 22 league starts between them, have been left out of the matchday squad by Ruben Amorim.
The teams news is in, and the line-ups look like this:
Man City: Ederson, Walker, Dias, Gvardiol, Gundogan, Silva, Doku, De Bruyne, Foden, Matheus Nunes, Haaland. Subs: Ortega, Stones, Kovacic, Grealish, Savio, Simpson-Pusey, O’Reilly, McAtee, Mubama.
Man Utd: Onana, de Ligt, Maguire, Martinez, Mazraoui, Ugarte, Fernandes, Dalot, Diallo, Hojlund, Mount. Subs: Bayindir, Lindelof, Zirkzee, Malacia, Eriksen, Yoro, Casemiro, Antony, Mainoo.
Referee: Anthony Taylor.
In the blue corner for #MCIMNU 🩵
XI | Ederson, Walker (C), Dias, Gvardiol, Gundogan, De Bruyne, Bernardo, Nunes, Foden, Doku, Haaland
SUBS | Ortega Moreno, Stones, Kovacic, Grealish, Savinho, Simpson-Pusey, Mubama, O’Reilly, McAtee#ManCity | @etihad pic.twitter.com/2VP4OICPCf
— Manchester City (@ManCity) December 15, 2024
Hello world!
It’s the Premier League’s fifth-best team against the 13th, a side that would move level with Liverpool in the home-games-only league table if they win – and lag behind only Brentford – against one that has beaten only one team away from home in the league all season, and that was Southampton three months and a day ago. None of this sound very exciting.
But it’s hard to think of a more intriguing recent Manchester derby. Perhaps it’s come too soon in Ruben Amorim’s spell in charge of United, and results – one win in his four league games so far, three in six if you throw in the Europa League – suggest he has yet to turn that ship around. But at the same time we don’t know what Big Derby Energy might do to them, and they have the encouragement of knowing that this Manchester City side are currently worse (on form and in transition) than most sides in the Premier League. Amorim has first-hand experience of this, having led Sporting Lisbon to a rollicking 4-1 rout of City in the Champions League at the start of last month (albeit that was a very odd game, which I thought City should have won). Add to that City’s defensive injury crisis, compounded by Rico Lewis’s suspension. “The soul and the spirit of this team is there,” says Pep Guardiola. “We have to focus on ourselves because we’re not being at the level we want to be also, so we can’t think about the momentum of the others,” says Amorim. “We just have to think about ourselves.”
Anyway, enough of that. It’s a derby, and a bigger one than usual. Welcome!
