Questions of belief for Mourinho and Guardiola lie at the heart of Manchester derby

Jose Mourinho asks his labouring Manchester United squadtomanup,pepguardiola throws a supportive arm around his City players imploring them to keep the faith in a project encountering bumps in the road.

How different the landscape six weeks after the first meeting of the ubermensch in a Manchester derby both teams entered unbeaten having taken maximum points from their opening three Premier League games.

This feels like an altogether different engagement, the League Cup encounter providing a softer context for two teams forced to reassess for different reasons. The greater difficulty rests with Mourinho, who is – it seems – forced into daily revisions of the capabilities of his players.

The early impetus provided by Zlatan Ibrahimovic has dissipated to such a degree that the inclusion of the once great Swede prompts a question mark of its own. The midfield balance lost to United in the post-fergie era appears no nearer a solution despite the addition of the world’s most expensive player, Paul Pogba.

And then there is the puzzle of Henrikh the Unready, also known as Mkhitaryan, a playmaking catalyst brought from the Bundesliga to sprinkle stardust and pace across an underwhelming frontline. The Armenian has played just 108 of the 810 Premier League minutes available, and the question of his role in the team has become the big issue of Mourinho’s reign.

To complicate matters further, Mourinho has lost the one signing who has made a genuine difference in the heart of defence, Eric Bailly succumbing to a worrying knee injury in the defeat at Chelsea.

Compared to that little lot Guardiola is on Easy Street. His team remain top of the Premier League despite following up the defeat at Spurs with home draws against Everton and Southampton. What Guardiola could have done without was the 4-0 defeat at his former citadel, Barcelona. The second goal was the killer, coming as it did after the calamitous error from balljuggling keeper Claudio Bravo. Guardiola claimed Bravo’s cock-up was just that and in no way invalidates his grand design to prosper via possession in all parts of the pitch, starting at the back. Belief then is at the heart of the piece tonight, Guardiola looking to restore it and Mourinho to discover some.