Manchester United will renew their rivalry with Derby County tomorrow night, hosting the Rams in the third round of the FA Cup. The Red Devils have met the Rams 104 times across all competitions since 1892. United have won 45 of the meetings, 29 have ended in a draw with Derby County emerging victorious on 30 occasions.
This is where United commence their 2017-18 FA Cup campaign, having lost won the tournament in 2015-16. Looking ahead to this match, expect both sides to reshuffle their lineups. Derby County Manager Gary Rowett has suggested he will make some changes to his first team on the heels of a busy festive period schedule.
In fact, he has not ruled out even changing his entire starting XI for this clash. Meanwhile United Manager Jose Mourinho recently hit out at the schedule makers, and the television corporations that they answer to, over the ridiculous lack of turnaround time his side was given in between fixtures over the holiday period.
That said, he’ll make a lot of changes to his lineup, rest a lot of his starters, and we tried to anticipate that in our starting XI prediction here. We shifted from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-3 formation for our prediction.
For the match injury/fitness report go to this link.
MUFC Starting XI Prediction vs Derby County:
Anthony Martial Marcus Rashford Henrikh Mkhitaryan
Scott McTominay Juan Mata Ander Herrera
Luke Shaw Chris Smalling Victor Lindelof Matteo Darmian
David de Gea
The Jose Mourinho press conference video link, in which he addresses his future with the club and refers to what he calls “garbage news,” is available at this link.
FA Cup Odds: Man United 2/7, Draw 26/5, Derby County 14/1
FA Cup Prediction: Man United 3, Derby County 1
As always feel free to post your own final score prediction and/or United starting XI prediction in the comments section below
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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