Considering who owns Salford City, Saturday’s FA Cup 3rd round clash at City is a virtual Manchester Derby. Well, kind of sort of. David Beckham owns 10% of Salford City. The other five members of the Class of ’92 (Ryan Giggs, the Neville brothers, Gary and Phil, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt) own another 10%. Super-wealthy businessman James Lim owns the rest. So you know the players of Salford City will be fired up to try and pull off the monumental upset here!
FA Cup 3rd Round FYIs
Manchester City vs Salford City
Kickoff: Sat. Jan. 11, 3pm, The Etihad, Manchester, UK
Fun Fact: City have won their last 24 (going all the way back to 2017-18) in both domestic cups against lower division sides. The aggregate score of those 24 games is 88-12.
Man City Team News
Pep Guardiola gave an update on Ederson on Friday: “Yesterday, he trained better… without disturbance in his leg. [Will he be back soon?] I hope so.” So it sounds like he’s getting closer, but it’s unfathomable that he’ll be risked in a cup clash against a fourth tier side.
Guardiola also gave a quasi-update, during the same session, on Rodri: “It is important he recovers well. If at the end of the season will be good. This is the target.” So he is still out for the year, but it sounds like we now know that he’ll be fine for preseason training camp.
Otherwise there are no new fitness or unavailability concerns.
Starting XI Prediction
Stefan Ortega; Rico Lewis, Jahmai Simpson-Pusey, Manuel Akanji, Josko Gvardiol; Nico O’Reilly; Mateo Kovacic; Jeremy Doku, James McAtee, Jack Grealish; Erling Haaland
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.