Manchester United are arguably the biggest
obstacle standing between Manchester City and a domestic treble of Premier
League, FA Cup and League Cup.
United, of course, are the only English team
to have won what we have come to think of as the ultimate Treble - Premier
League, FA Cup and Champions League.
Victory at Old Trafford on Wednesday would
take Pep Guardiola's side a huge step towards their own unique feat, a trio of
trophies no English team has won before in the same season.
So as the two Manchester clubs go head to head
in a game of such magnitude, it seems like the perfect time to compare United
1999 and City 2019, and consider which players might make it into a combined
XI.
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Goalkeeping: Creator
or destroyer?
Nowhere is it more obvious that football has
changed between the 1990s and now than with goalkeeping.
Peter Schmeichel's first Premier League title
with Manchester United in 1993 came a year after the dreary safety valve that
was the picked-up backpass was outlawed, and just six-and-a-half years after
his son Kasper was born.
Now, keepers pass the ball like Giuseppe Giannini and Kasper is a man in his 30s who
has a Premier League winner's medal of his own. Life moves on.
Even so, Peter Schmeichel or Ederson? The
United man had a pass completion rate of only 48% in 1998-99, but had to make
(poetically) 99 saves in the Premier League as United edged the title from
Arsenal.
This season, Ederson has stroked 71% of his
passes to a team-mate but has only had to make 54 saves as City's dominance of
the ball, in the form of an opposition-numbing average possession rate of 68%,
makes him as much a creator as a destroyer of strikers' dreams. The Brazilian
has provided more assists for Premier League goals than United's Romelu Lukaku
has this season.
It boils down to this: do you want to see a
goalkeeper making fingertip saves and occasionally going up for late corners,
or do you want an 11th outfielder selling outrageous dummies to opponents
hurtling towards them? There's no right answer, it's just a question of
aesthetics.
Manchester City will have to concede 16 goals
in their final four league games this season if they are to finish with a
defensive record inferior to Manchester United's in 1998-99.
That famous defence of Gary Neville, Jaap
Stam, Denis Irwin and one of Ronny Johnsen, Henning Berg, Wes Brown or
(occasionally) David May actually conceded three at Arsenal, three at Sheffield
Wednesday and three at home to Middlesbrough.
The current City team have conceded three in a
Premier League game just once this season, and only three times since January
2017.
So, the United defence you thought was all
about defending is worse than the City defence you thought was all about
attacking. But wait: Neville, Stam, Irwin, Berg and Phil Neville contributed 10
assists between them in 1998-99.
Benjamin Mendy (who flourished briefly in the
autumn) aside, City's defenders do not generally offer the same raw output.
Their job is incessant circulation but it was the United defenders who could
make the opposition backline's blood run cold.
- Premier League
stats: Will 96 points be enough for Manchester City?
Midfield: Icons and record breakers
So, the United defence you thought was all
about defending is worse than the City defence you thought was all about
attacking. But wait: Neville, Stam, Irwin, Berg and Phil Neville contributed 10
assists between them in 1998-99.
Benjamin Mendy (who flourished briefly in the
autumn) aside, City's defenders do not generally offer the same raw output.
Their job is incessant circulation but it was the United defenders who could
make the opposition backline's blood run cold.
- Premier League stats: Will
96 points be enough for Manchester City?
Midfield: Icons and
record breakers
Name a more iconic midfield than David
Beckham, Roy Keane, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs.
In the Premier League alone in 1998-99, those
four contributed 37 goals and assists between them, plus another five
from Pele's favourite, Nicky Butt.
And before you say "that was a settled
team, the modern game is riddled with rotation", bear in mind that the
"classic" United Treble XI of Schmeichel, Gary Neville, Irwin,
Johnsen, Stam, Keane, Scholes, Beckham, Giggs, Yorke and Cole only ever started
together in one game, and that in a stadium which no longer even exists -
Coventry's Highfield Road in February 1999.
But contemporary Manchester City's midfield
certainly does exist and they too have players with numbers worthy of
celebration. David Silva has 21 more assists than any other Premier League
footballer in the 2010s, Kevin de Bruyne has the best minutes-per-assist rate
(197.0) in Premier League history, followed in second place by Leroy Sane
(212.1).
Then again, David Beckham has scored six more
direct free-kicks (18) than any player in Premier League history and three
times as many as Burnley.
- My players have 'Manchester United DNA' - Solskjaer
Cole often feels like the unfairly forgotten
man in the Premier League goal-total annals, his haul of 187 - with only one
penalty - putting him well ahead of the other players to reach treble figures
with one or zero spot-kicks to their name (Les Ferdinand, Emile Heskey, Peter
Crouch and Paul Scholes).
Yorke, meanwhile, has the unlikely honour of
being the only player to score eight or more headed goals in multiple Premier
League seasons.
We started this whole
process by noting the vast difference between Schmeichel and Ederson, but at
the other end of the pitch it feels much more interchangeable.
If Aguero had
played in United red as the 20th century came to an end, he would have racked
up a lot of goals. Similarly, the interplay between Yorke and Cole would not
look out of place on the scribbled pages of a Pep Guardiola tactics sketchbook.
Which team is
better? One won the Treble, the other is five games from their own version of
it.
Back in 1998-99, City were scrapping their way out of the third
tier of English football, and had not defeated their rivals for 10 years.
Things aren't quite that bad yet at Old Trafford but it's a handy reminder that
football is reliably cyclical. The only currency that lasts is good players.
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