3 reasons why Manchester City will win the Manchester derby

#3: United’s slow starts could prove fatal

United's defence has been unsteady this season and they've often started games slowly

Unusually for a Jose Mourinho side, Manchester United’s defence has looked largely unsteady for great swathes of 2018/19 thus far. As mentioned in the previous slide, they’ve already conceded 18 goals in their first 11 games – meaning they’ve let in an average of 1.6 goals per game.

It doesn’t sound like much in a way, but when clean sheets are such a key to success, it’s actually a major problem.

Probably the most worrying trend that United have seen develop this season however is their dangerously slow starts to games. United’s current record in the league is 6 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses, but it’s notable that they’ve fallen behind on 6 occasions, including in two of their victories.

Most notably, they had to dig extremely deep to beat Newcastle in October, as the Magpies went into half-time with a 2-0 lead, and they also played the majority of their 2-2 draw with Chelsea at a goal behind before Anthony Martial’s second half equaliser.

And in terms of Sunday’s game, that’s worrying for three reasons. Firstly, City are tremendous front-runners; they’ve scored 8 goals in the first 20 minutes of their league games thus far and once they take the lead, they rarely look like they’ll surrender it.

Secondly, they’ve gone behind on just 3 occasions in all competitions, and 2 of those times saw them equalise less than 15 minutes after they’d conceded – meaning only Champions League foes Lyon have managed to hold the advantage over Guardiola’s side, inflicting their only defeat upon them.

And finally, no manager can capitalise on an opponent’s weakness quite like Pep. Last season’s 3-2 victory over United saw his charges take full advantage of a notable vulnerability that the Red Devils had from set-pieces – with smaller players David Silva and Nicolas Otamendi scoring from two corners.

Assuming Guardiola has taken note of United’s tendency to start slowly this season, then we can also assume that City will look to swarm their opponents early on and put them too far behind to catch up. And undoubtedly, they’re talented enough to pull that off.

If City can score one or two early goals in Sunday’s game, then the likelihood is that the contest will be over – firmly in the favour of the side in Blue.