Pep Guardiola has bruising Man City truth for new Manchester United investors

Manchester United have every chance of beating Manchester City on Sunday.

Erik Ten Hag is a good coach with a good team backed by owners that have put hundreds of millions of pounds into the squad, and won this fixture last season thanks in no small part down to farcical refereeing decisions. Derbies do funny things to the formbook and City have shown they can be vulnerable.

Whatever happens at Old Trafford at the weekend though, the Blues will start next week ahead of their nearest rivals in the table. Whether they are three, six, or nine points ahead, they will be ahead - just as they have been every single season since Sir Alex Ferguson left in 2013.

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Pep Guardiola has spent seven seasons finishing ahead of United and has been building the kind of legacy at the Etihad that will make his eventual departure the most significant since Ferguson, a moment City fans are dreading and rivals are longing for. The league has belatedly caught onto the idea that it is Guardiola who is pushing City to new limits, and so when he goes there is an expectation that things will drop.

Whether the fall will be as steep as United after Ferguson is hard to believe though because of the way City operate. Guardiola has all the tools to thrive because there are owners who have a chairman in charge with a clear vision, a director of football who can sign players for that vision, and a CEO to make sure the club generates the money to make it all affordable.

When Guardiola was discussing his successor recently, his justification for why City didn't need a manager from a top club was that