Manchester United have been four different teams in four matches, and Manchester City arrive on Sunday
City are top of the Premier League with a perfect nine points in Enzo Maresca’s first season. United are eleventh, having lost at Hull, beaten Ipswich 5-2 and thrown away a lead at Everton. Kick-off at Old Trafford is 9pm IST on Sunday.
Sep 11, 2026
Manchester United have played four competitive matches this season and looked like four different teams. They lost 2-0 at Hull. They won 5-2 against Ipswich. They led twice at Everton and drew 2-2. On Thursday they put four past Sabah without conceding. On Sunday, Manchester City come to Old Trafford at 9pm IST, and one of those four versions has to turn up.
The table is not close
City have won all three of their league games. Nine points, seven goals scored, two conceded, top of the table on goals scored ahead of Arsenal. United are eleventh on four points, with a goal difference of plus one that is doing a lot of work to look respectable: seven scored, six conceded, spread across a thrashing, a hammering of their own, and a draw they let slip.
Both sides come into the derby off a European win. City beat Porto 2-0 in Portugal on Tuesday. United beat Sabah 4-0 on Thursday. Only one of those results tells you anything, and it is not the 4-0.
Maresca’s City are three from three and nobody quite knows what they are yet
The obvious story is the one on the City bench. Pep Guardiola left in the summer after a decade in charge, and Enzo Maresca was appointed on 29 June on a three-year contract, coming back to a club where he had coached the youth team and worked as Guardiola’s assistant in the 2018-19 treble season. City paid Chelsea compensation to get him.
Three wins from three is the ideal start, and it also tells you very little about whether a City side built entirely in one man’s image can be run by somebody else. Nine points in September is not the test. Old Trafford in September is not really the test either, on current form. But it is the first time this City team will be asked a question in front of a crowd that wants them to fail.
They spent to make sure. Enzo Fernandez arrived from Chelsea on deadline day for £125m, matching the British record Liverpool set for Alexander Isak. That is a lot of money for a midfielder at a club that already had midfielders, and it says something about how seriously City took the idea of a transition year.
Haaland scores in this fixture, and it does not always matter
Erling Haaland has eight goals and three assists in seven Premier League appearances against United. That is a ludicrous return, and here is the part people forget: City have won four of those seven and lost three. Haaland scoring at Old Trafford is close to a formality. City winning because of it is not.
United’s own attacking case rests almost entirely on Bruno Fernandes, who scored a 28-minute hat-trick against Ipswich and set up another, and has been comfortably the best thing about Michael Carrick’s start. Against Sabah he and Youri Tielemans found each other repeatedly in midfield. Sabah are not City.
What Carrick actually has to fix
Carrick was asked on Thursday whether the Sabah win had been the perfect night, and he agreed it had, before adding the caveat himself. “Results-wise, it hasn’t been the start we wanted,” he said. “You know, we wanted to have more points in the league.”
That is the whole problem in one sentence. United have not been bad for ninety minutes this season. They have been bad for thirty, then excellent for thirty, then careless. Hull, newly promoted and playing their first home game back in the division, beat them with two goals from centre-backs. At Everton they were 2-1 up going into stoppage time and conceded in the 96th minute to Ainsley Maitland-Niles, from outside the box, on his Everton debut. Against Ipswich they went behind at home and then scored five.
A team that swings like that can beat anybody, which is genuinely the case for United on Sunday. It is also why nobody sensible will back them. City have not conceded more than one goal in a league match yet. United have conceded two in each of their three.
My read: City by a goal, and United will have a twenty-minute spell where Old Trafford believes it. That spell is usually the most entertaining thing about this fixture, and it is usually not enough.