Last summer, Sir Alex Ferguson claimed Manchester City had a “small club mentality”.

Ahead of Saturday’s derby, Nigel de Jong claimed that trying to stop United winning the league served as motivation to perform.

“It would be nice to damage United’s title chances,” he said. “United need the points to catch Chelsea and they know Arsenal are behind them.”

Our victory meant we went within one point of Chelsea, whilst City dropped out of the top four to make room for Spurs.

After the game, Gary Neville was asked whether damaging City’s chances of Champions League football motivated United at the weekend.

“Whether or not our win prevents City qualifying for the Champions League is not an issue for us,” he said. “The great thing about Manchester United is that we never get carried away with what other teams are doing, even if they are local rivals. We just concentrate on our job and, as much as we possibly can, we take the emotion out of the game and try to win for ourselves.”

As if all the trophies, the size of fan base and quality of players wasn’t enough to tell the two clubs apart, the attitude of the players certainly does the trick.




------------
The RoM Manchester United 2024-25 season preview is now available. It includes articles from the country's best football writers about our expectations for the season ahead and our brightest talents, as well as proposed transfer business and which youth players to keep an eye out for. All profit goes to The Christie so please support this fantastic cause.