Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag responds to Pep Guardiola praise

Erik ten Hag has no regrets about taking over as Manchester United manager despite Pep Guardiola suggesting he would have been a worthy successor to him at City.

In April, Guardiola said Ten Hag "could be one of the ones" to replace him and Guardiola has entered the final year of his contract.

Ten Hag's Ajax deal was also due to expire in 2023 but rather than stay in Amsterdam he accepted the challenge of managing United.

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"It's a nice compliment, first, but I'm 100 per cent convinced I choose Man United with everything in it and I didn't regret it for one second until now."

Ten Hag was coach of Bayern Munich II when Guardiola coached the first-team and lauded the Catalan. "First of all, it's most important no person is the same, so I have to stick by myself and then I learn a lot from many human beings in football, especially from top coaches.

"And I admire Pep Guardiola a lot because he's not only successful, he's doing it in a certain way that really attracts people to football and that is a reward."

United lost both derbies last season, having won three and drawn one of their previous four Premier League encounters with City. Ten Hag has presided over four successive domestic wins and received the Manager of the Month award for September and is confident United can execute a winning game plan on Sunday.

"The approach is from us to look to ourselves," he explained. "The approach from Man United is we want to win every game, that message I told several times here. The aim on Sunday is nothing else.

"We have to perform our best, we have to, out of our way of playing, our rules, our principles, we have to do our best, we make a good game plan and it's about