Both Fergie and Mancini will both look to swim home with the 3 points

Manchester City and Manchester United clash at The Etihad today in the biggest game of the season so far and Alex Ferguson will see this as the perfect opportunity to begin executing revenge on last season.

Fergie started his assault on City with his obligatory mind games directed at Mancini, focusing on the fact City win too many penalties at home – 21 since the start of 2010/11 to be precise. Much like last season, Mancini is exhibiting a cool exterior and showing no signs of the comments getting to him; and even responded with a well-targeted jab of his own by bringing up Ashley Young’s ‘swimming’ antics last year.

Interestingly, the desired result of Ferguson’s comments was unlikely to be to get a reaction out of Mancini, but more to manipulate the thoughts of the referee to protect United’s fledging backline.

It’s no secret that Ferguson has been disappointed with the defensive performance of his team this year and his remarks appear to expose the insecurity he feels over his back four facing the likes of Teves, Aguero, Nasri and Silva – slippery players who are susceptible to being tripped in the box.

From a neutral perspective, the game really has the makings of a classic. United’s tendency to leak goals has been surpassed by their prolific scoring at the other end, notching a total of 37 in 15 games – 9 more than City. These stats suggest we could be in for a goal fest, especially with Mancini already labelling a game as a must win for the Sky Blues.

City are still unbeaten in the league and have conceded the lowest amount of goals with a mere 11 getting past Joe Hart – 5 less than any other Premier League club. Captain Vincent Kompany will face their toughest challenge yet though and the prospect of keeping Robin van Persie and co from scoring may be too much to ask.

Expect Rooney to spend a lot of time close to the central midfielders in an attempt to nullify Yaya Toure’s physical presence. City have little threat on the wings, so Patrice Evra is likely to be asked to stick close to Nasri and at times may look to form almost a central back three with Evans and Ferdinand. Ferguson will order his central midfield, along with Rooney, to focus their distribution to the wings where United could enjoy their biggest threat.

The two keys to the game will be how well United’s defence can withstand the pace and trickiness of City’s forwards, and how much damage United can execute down the wings.

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