Manchester City v Manchester United: Premier League – live | Premier League

14 mins: Kobbie Mainoo comes on. Mount has played around 17% of United’s Premier League minutes this season, and assuming that’s a minor muscle injury – he walks off the pitch unaided and without apparent physical agony – it’ll be a few weeks before he plays any more.

13 mins: Mason Mount’s game is over. It’s not a contact injury, he just goes down off the ball and the camera finds him sitting there, looking absolutely gutted.

11 mins: Amad Diallo is played into space down the right. He’s offside by a few yards, but still the linesman waits until he gives the ball away before he raises his flag. That was probably clear enough to have been given at the time.

10 mins: Dalot’s second crossing opportunity of the game, this time on his right foot, is emphatically overhit and ends in a goal-kick.

9 mins: It is, as it should be, high-paced, low-precision stuff so far. “We’ve just been told (in the USA commentary) that the first derby was United representing a local church versus City representing a railway,” writes Justin Kavanagh. “Not much has really changed: The Reds haven’t had a prayer recently, while the Sky Blues have gone off the rails completely.”

6 mins: A first foray forward for United, whose break ends with Ederson catching Dalot’s cross from the left.

5 mins: De Bruyne swings a looping cross towards the far post, where Haaland is being marked by Martinez. The defender wins this one.

3 mins: Some early possession for City, which ends when Doku takes on Mazraoui and runs out of play.

1 min: Peeeeep! The home side get the ball rolling.

Blue Moon rings out. Hand shaken, coin flipped, teams huddling. Kick-off imminent.

The players are in the tunnel-type mirror-walled foyer area. Kick-off just a few minutes away. “So, reading between the lines, Amorim is saying that Rashford got dressed wrong?” writes Matt Dony. “I bet he put his socks on before his shorts. Nothing weirder.” I’m with you here. Socks go on last, simple.

An email! “Looks like City’s injury crisis is really starting to bite, with just £200m of talent on the bench,” writes Tim Woods. “Still, as a Liverpool fan I find myself in that rare position of hoping for a United win. Despite their troubles, I still fear City can put together a 25-game winning run to deny us (or Chelsea) the title once again.” Obviously I’m completely impartial, but it would be nice if a different team won the league for a change. Four in a row and six out of seven is quite enough for the time being.

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.

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.

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