Many believe that Sunday’s Manchester Derby at Old Trafford will determine whether or not we have a Premier League title race this season beyond this weekend. If Manchester United win, they draw within five points of table topping Manchester City. Should City triumph, it’s 11 points clear and thus a very comfortable margin.
Both Juan Mata of United and Yaya Toure of City though have said that the title race will not be decided this weekend. On the other hand, you have the thoughts of Andrei Kanchelskis, who scored 28 goals in 123 appearances for United, and also spent part of 2001 on loan with Manchester City.
He sees the outcome of this match having much more consequence.
“If United can win both derbies then they will have a good chance of winning the title,” Kanchelskis said.
“But if they lose on Sunday it is finished. There will be no chance. It will be 11 points — it is not possible. It is too much.”
Kanchelskis, who the FA Cup and league title double with United in ’94, believes that City boss Pep Guardiola, not United manager Jose Mourinho is better suited for the Red Devils. He expressed sentiments similar to club legend of legends Eric Cantona, who also said recently that he thinks Pep fits in better at Old Trafford.
“It is not like we played under Ferguson. We always played with wingers,” Kanchelskis said.
“Now it is City who play with wingers and you can see City are scoring a lot of goals.”
“It would have been better to keep Ryan Giggs. Try him. He had worked all his life at United, he understood everything. The fans would help him, the fans trust him.
“If you keep Giggs as coach, the results would definitely have been better than under Louis van Gaal, and David Moyes as well.”
Well, I don’t know exactly about that last part there. Kanchelskis made a let’s call it “bold” and “very outside the box” analysis there. Moyes was a failure yes, but Giggs as manager getting better results than Mourinho or Van Gaal? I don’t think so.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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