Premier League Preview: Is This the Most Eagerly Awaited Manchester Derby Ever?

The Premier League season is three games old, 270 minutes in. A good stew needs longer cooking time. Yet ahead of the 172nd edition of the Manchester derby, there is a palpable sense Saturday lunchtime's game could somehow prove seismic.

Whether this is a result of the Premier League's omnipresent hype machine repeatedly smacking us over the head in the past fortnight with all the subtlety of Jerry's introducing Tom's whiskered chops to an oversized frying pan—or has a semblance of truth to it—is a matter of no little conjecture.

Less contentious is the fact Manchester United vs. Manchester City has the look of a game sent from heaven. This Is The One, indeed.

Paul Scholes has said the game could turn out to be a title decider. Given there will be 102 points still to play for after Saturday, it seems a tad premature to invite the Premier League's official trophy engraver to Old Trafford.

At the same time, if the match leaves you cold, it might be advisable to get checked out by a doctor for early signs of rigor mortis. According to the Telegraph, the 12:30 p.m. BST kick-off should ensure it becomes the most watched live match in Premier League history. It is said the game has a "household reach" of a record 901 million and will be broadcast live in all 190 countries that show the Premier League.

It's a shame Scholes will be watching Salford City.

An international break for a Premier League junkie is the equivalent of going cold turkey, with the elongated buildup to the first Jose Mourinho vs. Pep Guardiola battle on English soil having generated a fervour bordering on feverishness for all but the most evenhanded. One supporter even complained of experiencing visions of Sam Allardyce crawling across his ceiling carrying a drumstick, like the haunting baby scene in Trainspotting.

Thank inclement weather in Beijing over the summer for the fact the first Manchester derby in a bracing new era for both clubs will be played in the city of L.S. Lowry and Tony Wilson, as opposed to one visited for the sole reason of it having the deepest commercial pockets to pay for an (ultimately abandoned) pre-season friendly. The title of Andy Mitten's exemplary essay Pep and Jose Chronicles Chapter 1—The World Looks to Manchester says it all, really.

It has been billed as the most expensive game in the history of football. UK broadcasters Sky Sports will be delighted, having reacted to the news of the Premier League's breaking the billion pound mark in transfer fees over the summer as one might the birth of a first child. Maybe both captains will be presented with a commemorative plaque before kick-off.

The two sides expected to start are worth (a relative term) more than £600 million in transfer fees. City's possible lineup was assembled for a paltry £289.25 million, in comparison to United's £328.1 million spend. And they say there's no such thing as a bargain these days.

In fairness, the early signs are both clubs may have spent well.

Eric Bailly has been a revelation for United. He has the nastiness of Jaap Stam and loves the dirty side of defending, but he can play as well. His 95 per cent pass-completion rate is the highest of any defender in the Premier League. Alongside him, Daley Blind is playing well enough to keep Chris Smalling kicking his heels on the sidelines.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, of whom there will be more later, has four goals from as many competitive games, while Paul Pogba plays with enough smile and swagger to suggest he doesn't lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling thinking of 89 million different reasons why he might not be worth the money United paid for him. Mourinho's statement signings have so far vindicated his faith and the heaviest of wage packets.

John Stones has been quietly impressive for City, too, with a £47.5 million price tag not looking as eye-wateringly steep as it did when Everton boss Ronald Koeman offered to drive him to the Etihad himself, replete with a bag marked "swag" in the boot of his car.

Stones' suspect positional sense was exposed in City's opening game, though, when he lost Jermain Defoe for Sunderland's equaliser.

On Saturday, his at-times tractable physicality will be tested to its limits by Ibrahimovic. As Wes Morgan and Jose Fonte will attest, the 34-year-old doesn't leap for crosses like a 34-year-old. If Ibrahimovic gets a yard on Stones in the air, it could be like tossing a bone for a pit bull and a poodle to fight over.

All over the field, United have a significant height advantage. Mourinho will almost certainly have drilled into his players the importance of set pieces, with City likely to have only two outfield players in their starting XI at least 6' tall (Stones and fellow centre-half Aleksandar Kolarov). In stark contrast, a physically imposing United side could boast as many as five (in particular 6'5" Ibrahimovic, 6'4" Marouane Fellaini and 6'3" Pogba are menaces at dead-ball situations), with the rest nudging 6' in any case.

The availability of buccaneering full-back pair Antonio Valencia and Luke Shaw, both doubts but expected to start, will be key for getting quality deliveries into City's box. Guardiola's side has yet to keep a clean sheet in the Premier League, with concerns over their defensive capabilities a nagging doubt despite flashes of brilliance going forward.

A triumvirate of victories each for United and City in the league so far in seeing off Bournemouth, Southampton and Hull City, and Sunderland, Stoke City and West Ham United, respectively—to varying degrees of difficulty—were little more than starters to Saturday's main course.

As Mourinho and Guardiola will be acutely aware, no one will remember the vol-au-vents if the steak is served incinerated. Privately, both would love nothing more than to have the other's head dished up on a silver platter, even if fixed-smile taciturnity has been the agreed modus operandi since the pair pitched up in Manchester vowing to put Spanish squabbles to rest.

It's worth noting the only previous occasion both clubs won their opening three games was in 2011/12, when City went on to win the league on the final day courtesy of a superior goal difference to United. It was in the same season that City beat United 6-1 at Old Trafford, inflicting on their rivals a heaviest home defeat in more than half a century to lay down a marker of the club they were trying to become. Mario Balotelli scored two on the day and lifted his shirt to show a T-shirt with the message, "Why always me?"

OGC Nice, you have been warned. It is indeed always him.

In head-to-head meetings, Mourinho has beaten Guardiola just three times in 17 matches with his bete noire, having tasted defeat on seven occasions. He has won 22 trophies over a 13-year period with Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid, while Guardiola boasts 21 pieces of silverware in seven years at Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

Guardiola is the first Manchester City manager to win his first five games in charge of the club, while Mourinho is the first to win his first four matches at Manchester United. Something has to give on Saturday. 

Manuel Pellegrini would likely snort at predictions made in September and point to the fact City were pronounced champions-elect by all and sundry last season after winning their first five matches. They finished the campaign 15 points shy of champions Leicester City.

Nothing tests a man's resolve to remain polite like a derby. If Mourinho can sit on his hands for the whole 90 minutes, in a Manchester derby at Old Trafford, it's almost certain he'll have had them nailed to his seat. A more likely scenario will see the theatre of the occasion prove too overwhelming for the ultimate showman to stay in the wings for long.

If Mourinho isn't eyeballing the fourth official at the first award of a contentious throw-in, he'd better hope random drugs tests don't detect sedatives.

The toxicity that still exists between the managers lends the game a foreboding if fascinating sense it could blow up at any minute, like watching a fire juggler perform a high-risk routine on a petrol station forecourt.

This obsession with those who wear suits and ties (or in Guardiola's case, Stone Island) rather than shorts and studs is clearly not to everyone's taste. If every writer who forlornly noted this week that Saturday's game had become more about the managers than players was fined a pound, the pot would not be far off the accumulative spend of Premier League clubs over the summer.

Should Mourinho manage to stay on civil terms with Guardiola, it could be Ibrahimovic who provides the fireworks. Stand well back and watch the spectacle if he troubles the scoresheet, with the Swede having famously said of his one-time boss at Barcelona (via the Guardian): "If Mourinho lights up a room, Guardiola draws the curtains."

In less poetic but equally efficacious terms, he has at various times called Guardiola "a little caretaker," "a spineless coward," "a brick wall," "not a man" and, presumably by extension of the latter, yelled at him: "You have no balls!"

Joe Hart, Yaya Toure, Wilfried Bony, Eliaquim Mangala, Samir Nasri, Martin Demichelis and Stevan Jovetic may all beg to differ.

Ibrahimovic, who has a black belt in taekwondo, even reportedly went as far as threatening to get physical with Guardiola in a bid to engineer a move away from Barcelona.

"He threatened to beat Guardiola in public," Barcelona's corporate vice-president Carles Vilarrubi told radio station RAC1 (via ESPN) back in 2011. "He said, 'If you do not let me go I will paste him in front of the press'."

To think Sir Bobby Charlton was worried about Mourinho's loose tongue.

Guardiola told Ibrahimovic during his time at Barcelona he was not welcome to drive his Porsche to training and would instead have to use one of the club's Audis. City's boss has been branded "boring" by Peter Schmeichel this week on Omnisport (via the Independent), which is akin to being labelled "heavy-handed" by Attila the Hun.

The Dane is perhaps the only pundit capable of making otherwise sane adults daydream longingly for Robbie Savage.

Ibrahimovic has geared up for his first Manchester derby by posting a video of himself on social media carefully packing a box of his training gear for new City goalkeeper Claudio Bravo. He addressed it to the Etihad Stadium with the message: "Welcome to Manchester! Here's some training gear, you're gonna need it. See you Saturday." Shy and retiring he is not.

Guardiola has his own centre-forward conundrum to solve so cannot spend too much time worrying about United's new poster boy. Having jettisoned the somewhat-inappropriately-named Bony to Stoke City, he has been left with slim options up front.

Sergio Aguero's suspension for the elbowing incident against West Ham's Winston Reid leaves Guardiola with Kelechi Iheanacho as his only specialist centre-forward. His predilection for a false nine is hardly new news, though, with the rejuvenated Raheem Sterling an option to move inside, as is Nolito (three goals already in a City shirt), with Leroy Sane drafted in to make his debut out wide.

Fellow new boys Bravo and Ilkay Gundogan, fit again after a long injury but lacking match sharpness, will both likely begin life at City on the substitutes' bench.

Having contributed to 131 goals in 153 Premier League appearances for Manchester City (105 goals, 26 assists), Aguero's absence will be sorely felt, and it perhaps tilts the odds slightly in United's favour. Even amid the myriad attacking talent that both sides possess (Ibrahimovic has scored 41 times in his last 34 league games), Aguero is by some distance the best of the bunch.

David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne have played some lovely stuff through the centre this term, but the Manchester derby has always been particularly kind to Aguero. Eight goals in the fixture is testimony to what City will be missing on Saturday.

Many a sagacious critic feel Marcus Rashford could one day reach Aguero's level, if he is handled with due care and diligence. Despite Mourinho's protestations to the contrary, which were picked apart by anyone with even a vague knowledge of his career, the Portuguese has a less-than-stellar record in terms of developing and nurturing young talent.

Rashford's hat-trick in midweek for England's under-21 side after being overlooked for Allardyce's first senior squad, preceded by a match-winning cameo off the bench against Hull City prior to the international break, has only intensified calls for him to start more regularly for United. The 18-year-old looks as natural a finisher the club has had at its disposal arguably since Ruud van Nistelrooy.

Criticism of Wayne Rooney has been typically waspish, but given Anthony Martial has struggled for anything like his best form so far this season (a goal for France against Italy from a Pogba pass in midweek should help), it's more likely he would be the fall guy should Mourinho make changes to a winning lineup.

United's academy head Nicky Butt said in a recent interview with the Times' Henry Winter that Rashford is at his most productive when cutting in from the left, a la Martial: "I believe his best position is off the side. Blistering pace. When Marcus runs at you, you can't stop him. If he does what he did last year this year, then he's a £50 million player straightaway."

Last season in a pair of largely wretched Manchester derbies, it was Rashford who netted the solitary goal scored over the two games. If there's one thing for certain, should he get a chance to play on Saturday, a potential worldwide audience of 901 million will not daunt him.

It appears not a lot does.

Whether Mourinho, Guardiola and the respective sides they put out will be as equally calm under a spotlight unprecedented even for a Premier League that seems to put the sun in the shade at times is a question only Saturday can answer.

Hold on to your hats, Manchester.

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