Mason Greenwood of Manchester United Photo: VCG

On Sunday evening the teams of Manchester United and Manchester City will meet for the 182th Manchester derby at Old Trafford, but it might not mean as much outside of the city this time around.

As it stands, for once - and this is a rarity in recent years - the two clubs will meet with neither of them able to win the title. Pep Guardiola's side are second but they sit 22 points behind table topping Liverpool with just 12 games to go, although City do have a game in hand.

Mathematically, their title hopes are not yet over, but it will need more of Liverpool performing like they did against Watford in their first loss of the season last weekend to reignite title hopes.

As for the hosts, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side are an embarrassing 37 points off the pace set by Jurgen Klopp's champions in waiting and no closer to winning a first title since the current coach's former manager Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 than under David Moyes, Louis van Gaal or Jose Mourinho.

Even in their best finish since, which came under Mourinho in the 2017-18 season, they finished 19 points behind their city rivals in the final league table - a feat totally as unforgivable as it was unthinkable under Ferguson.

This season, fans of Manchester's most successful side are merely looking to end the season in fourth place in the English Premier League, the last of the spots that guarantees qualification to next season's UEFA Champions League.

The top four could of course become the top five, at least for everyone aside from Manchester City.

That is assuming that the Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City are unsuccessful in their appeal of a UEFA ban for falling foul of the European football governing body's Financial Fair Play rules.

City have been banned from the next two UEFA Champions Leagues but are taking the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in an effort to get that ban overturned. Presuming they do not then they will be ineligible and the runners-up elect being banned would drag another club into the mix.

Manchester United would hope to benefit but that is far from cut and dry. The Old Trafford outfit sit fifth right now but are three points off fourth-placed Chelsea and missed out on another opportunity to cut the gap with a drab 1-1 draw against Everton on March 2.

In the meantime, the Premier League newer recruits of Wolves and newly promoted Sheffield United are within sniffing distance - the Wolverhampton side are one place behind United on goal difference and the Blades are just two points back.

Looking back

In the preceding years, the red half of Manchester has celebrated 75 derby wins, while the blue half have crowed over 54 victories. 

The remaining 52 games ended honors even. So what are we to expect when the teams renew their rivalry this weekend?

This is the fourth time they have met this season. The first game, at City's Etihad Stadium, was won by the Red Devils. That English Premier League meeting back in 2019, which seems a million years ago from now for both sides, ended in a 2-1 win for United.

The goals that cold December night came from a Marcus Rashford penalty and Anthony Martial for United in the first half before City's Nicolas Otamendi narrowed the gap with just five minutes to go.

These sides then met again in the semifinal of the Carabao Cup, with the first leg coming at Old Trafford in early January.

City won that handsomely. They were 3-0 up by halftime - the goals coming from Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez and an own goal from the unfortunate Andreas Pereira - and Guardiola's players and fans will have felt rightly disappointed to not have finished the game with the tie out of sight.

In the end it finished only 3-1, thanks to a second-half strike from United's Rashford which gave them hope ahead of meeting again some three weeks later. Against both form and the odds, it was the visitors at the Etihad who won out on the night in the rematch.

Despite a red card for Serbian midfielder Nemanja Matic, United won 1-0 thanks to a goal from the same player and ended just a whisker away from taking the tie to extra time, but City saw it out and went on to win the League Cup for a seventh time, beating Aston Villa 2-1 at Wembley last weekend.

That was an eighth trophy of the last nine on offer domestically, if you include the season curtain raising Community Shield (and as many have pointed out, Guardiola certainly includes that as a title). Three Carabao Cup titles in a row is quite the achievement.

However, such silverware is quickly beginning to mean less and less at a club that have gone from 20 years in the top flight title wilderness to setting back to back English Premier League record point totals and assuming a place at the top table of European football.

European campaign

City will surely have an eye on their UEFA Champions League round of 16 second-leg tie against Real Madrid on March 17. 

The English club won 2-1 away at the Santiago Bernabeu, and take their away goal advantage back to Manchester. This could, of course, be Guardiola's last chance to win the former European Cup with City for some years, depending on whether their impending ban is upheld.

Their crosstown rivals would love such a quandary. Their own European aspirations extend only as far as the UEFA Champions League's poor relation, the UEFA Europa League. Europe's second-class tournament is a foot in the door to the Champions League for the winner but they face Austria's table topping LASK Linz over two legs in the round of 16.

Despite the distractions and the lack of silverware on the line, the Manchester derby promises to be a firecracker. They always are.
Newspaper headline: The Derby Blues