Roll on Sunday, 20 September.
Forgive me for not taking it one game at a time and looking slightly beyond Saturday morning’s pre-season opener in Kuala Lumpur, but I just can’t help relishing the Reds’ first skirmish with the New Improved Manchester City, especially now they have one Carlos Alberto Tevez in their ranks.
The summer recruitment drive at Eastlands – with or without the still possible additions of Adebayor and Terry – will not only make the race for fifth place more interesting (look out Everton and Villa, City are coming), it should also make for a better derby than the one we witnessed at Old Trafford on 10 May.
Of course, United picked up three more points on that last derby day, thank you very much, but it became a procession after the break with the Reds already two-up; even the ever-industrious Darren Fletcher admitted afterwards, “We slackened off a bit in the second half, but we’d done enough to win the match.”
I wonder, did the lack of resistance from City, then Arsenal six days later, give the United players the best preparation for the bigger fish they had to fry in Rome? I’d say not – if every game is a full-blooded, high stakes affair, with both teams going hammer and tongs, surely that’s better for maintaining levels of intensity and tempo. The Reds were playing, almost literally, cup finals every week en route to lifting the European Cup in 1999; when, conversely, the Premier League was won at a canter in 2000 and 2001, the concurrent Champions League campaigns faltered.
City at home won't be a cup final, it never is for United, but coming just six games into the league season, it could tell us just how seriously we should take the threat from our shopaholic neighbours. Especially if the Blues have
lived up to the expectations of their understandably giddy supporters and racked up a maximum 15 points before kick-off at Old Trafford.
So roll on the first derby of the new season, with a certain Argentine hell-bent on scoring against his former employers – assuming Mark Hughes brings him off the bench, that is. Such fire and brimstone from the Blues could bring out the best in the champions on the pitch and stir the crowd off it as we rise to the challenge of a new world order in football. Apparently.