Jose’s three musketeers can catch City off guard in the derby
IF Manchester City win the derby at Old Trafford today, the Premier League title race is over. But if they lose it, the door is well and truly open for a challenge for Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.
Three points for Pep Guardiola’s side today would leave them with an 11-point gap over their rivals and, with 16 games gone, I think that would be too huge for the rest to overcome.
If any manager is capable of stopping Manchester City today, it is Jose Mourinho and he is not going to go directly up against Guardiola’s rampant team, even at Old Trafford, in front of expectant Manchester United supporters. His side will sit in and look to hurt City on the counter-attack.
Manchester United’s performance at Arsenal last weekend was the best counter-attacking football they have played for a while. It was brilliant to watch.
They are certain to miss their tal- isman, Paul Pogba – rightly sent off at the Emirates, in my opinion – but that might mean Mourinho plays Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial together.
That seems adventurous but, as well as being superb, quick attacking players, they have all learned the other side of the game and Mourinho has taught them how he wants to play and the responsibilities they all have in the team. And they all have that devastating pace for the breaks.
Mourinho knows how to get results. He ended Arsenal’s amazing run last weekend and he has made sacrifices with his team selections if you look at the games at Chelsea and Liverpool and at home to Spurs, which have so far brought one win, one draw and a defeat.
There is more strategy to it than simply parking the bus and I don’t see any other way that Mourinho will approach this game. It may not be pretty, as the dull goalless draw at the Etihad in April reminds us, but why change it when it has worked so well?
City made the perfect start to this fixture last season when Kevin De Bruyne put them ahead early on and they were flying on the back of it and dominated possession. I can’t see Mourinho setting his team up to allow that to happen again.
Similarly, Sam Allardyce will be taking his Everton team to Anfield earlier in the day to ensure Liverpool cannot play.
He won at Liverpool with his Crystal Palace team last season, but he doesn’t have a striker with the presence of Christian Benteke, who scored two in the game, or the pace of Wilfred Zaha and Andros Townsend, who can carry the ball for 40/50 yards.
Even as an Evertonian who helped contribute to the bad run, I cannot put my finger on why Everton have not won at Anfield since 1999. I had three cracks at it and failed, and even when Steven Gerrard was sent off, and when we finished above them in the league, we still managed to lose.
We probably felt a fear and intimidation going to Anfield during my time which may still exist, whereas in the past, Everton teams have gone across Stanley Park with the attitude that they could take Liverpool on.
If they can avoid defeat today, it will set a new unbeaten record for Liverpool in the derby, which goes back over seven years. That is just too long for Evertonians.
Liverpool are in superb form at the moment, demonstrated by the 12 goals they have scored in the last week against Spartak Moscow and Brighton.
Spartak’s performance will have proved to Allardyce that if you give Liverpool time and space, of course they have the players to destroy you.
The Brighton performance was arguably more impressive, even though there was so much more at stake in the European game. Chris Hughton’s side had only lost once at home this season to Manchester City and are hard to beat, but Liverpool just demolished them.
There are some encouraging signs for Everton, though. Liverpool were three-up in Seville and threw the game away to draw 3-3, which meant Jurgen Klopp had to name a strong side to face Spartak Moscow, rather than rest players.
As we all know, they are still susceptible at set pieces and I am certain that Allardyce will have been working on that on the training ground throughout the week.
In April, in this fixture, Everton were easily blown away but I couldn’t believe Ronald Koeman’s starting XI, which included Mason Holgate, Matthew Pennington, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Tom Davies. You can understand the belief in youth, but starting with old heads like Gareth Barry on the bench made no sense. And they paid the price.
Somehow you can’t see Big Sam going with inexperience today. Regardless of the young team that won against Limassol this week, he will name an experienced side, which will sit deep and try to catch Liverpool on the counter attack. He had the players to do that with Palace and it will be interesting to see if Everton’s players can handle it today.