All eyes are on Erling Haaland as Pep Guardiola comes up against his latest Manchester derby counterpart Erik ten Hag. Alex Keble analyses what to expect.
Instinctively, it feels like the first Manchester derby of the Erik ten Hag era is all about him and his team.
A test of the legitimacy of Manchester United’s 3-1 victory over Arsenal a few weeks ago and of how Ten Hag has used the unexpected break to further implement his tactical identity.
Yet this is just as important a test for Pep Guardiola, whose summer overhaul presents a more significant gamble than it might at first appear.
He has fundamentally altered the way Manchester City play – and United are the first side of any real substance they face this season.
Signing Erling Haaland was a no-brainer. His 11 goals in seven Premier League games suggest he will smash all the records and bring Man City a fifth title in six years.
But in the draws against Aston Villa and Newcastle United we began to see the potential problem of losing the false nine and the high-intensity pressing up top, an issue potentially compounded by the sales of Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus.
Any question about the fairly seismic tactical shift Guardiola has made will likely be answered when his team host a United side still willing to sit back and play on the break.
Static Haaland slowing City build-up
Haaland is better outside the box than people think and is capable of link play in the final third, but there is no denying he is pretty static up front.
On the ball, this is causing Man City to play a little slower (swapping Raheem Sterling for Jack Grealish has also contributed to this) and a little more sideways, with Kevin De Bruyne sitting high alongside him to make the issue even more pronounced.
Off the ball, it means a worse counter-press when opponents win possession (and no Jesus to swap in for him), allowing them to get their heads up and begin the counter-attack.
Guardiola has tried to patch this up by instructing both of his full-backs to sit narrow, adding a body to stamp out counters while, in possession, freeing Man City’s number eights to get higher into the half-spaces.
It has largely worked, although Aston Villa’s narrow diamond midfield stumped them while Newcastle and Crystal Palace repeatedly found space to dribble through midfield on the break. This is a Haaland problem more than anything else.
Casemiro could be key
There is a good chance United will test this to breaking point. Against Arsenal, Ten Hag instructed Christian Eriksen to sit deeper to distribute vertical ground passes (a Ten Hag trademark at Ajax) through to Bruno Fernandes and release Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford.
We should see plenty of these, with a focus placed on playing the two forwards (and perhaps Antony, too) quickly into the channels where Joao Cancelo and Kyle Walker will have vacated. Newcastle and Palace did that particularly well.
However, this will not be a simple story of Man City possession and United breaks.
For starters, Ten Hag won’t want his team to be passive or to get pinned back for long periods, and in fact United had flashes of Ajax-like football in the victory over Arsenal – when they benefited from a slightly disorganised Gunners press of the sort we are now seeing from Man City with Haaland leading it.
The first question, then, is how high United sit and how bold they are willing to be with the ball; a question tied to the midfield configuration Ten Hag chooses to deploy.
The Arsenal game came too early for Casemiro but he should start this time alongside Scott McTominay to shore up a central midfield lacking in bite and faced with an onslaught of Man City bodies, yet that partnership would significantly diminish United’s capacity to play progressively through the lines.
Perhaps Ten Hag will start Eriksen in a midfield three, tasking the Denmark international with dropping deep to dictate the tempo and find Fernandes as the Portuguese tucks in from a starting right wing position.
That is the position in which Fernandes ended the 3-1 win over Mikel Arteta’s side and it makes the most sense, providing Ten Hag decides Antony is too risky a selection against such a strong Man City team.
Reinvigorated Rashford
If that team selection is used with a relatively confrontational defensive line, in which United are aggressive in the challenge but quick to compress space between the lines and be patient when the hosts have the ball, then they can definitely cause a huge problem.
We know Walker will have to move into midfield, giving Rashford and Sancho an edge in transitional moments.
But that flank is just as important at the other end. Man City are easily winning matches even when not playing particularly well this season because they can rely on Kevin de Bruyne and Haaland to combine out of nothing, the latter roaming up into a right wing position to create chances.
Will Sancho be able to cover that space along with Tyrell Malacia? United had better hope so, because it seems unlikely Lisandro Martinez will win his aerial battles against Haaland.
As the United players try to adapt to entirely new concepts put forward by Ten Hag they will, for now, be at their best when able to channel the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer methods. This should be a very tight game in which the deciding factor will, as usual, be Haaland.
Whether he will be a help or a hindrance on Sunday will go a long way to answering any lingering doubts about the enormous tactical shift Guardiola enacted over the summer.
