Sky are switching their attention to Villa v Spurs, which you can follow with Nick Miller here. And so I shall take my leave. Thanks for your time. Bye!

Sky have grabbed a couple of City players. Their man of the match, Yaya Touré, is first:

Today we proved we have a strong team. After the defeat in the Carling Cup we needed to bounce back and today we did that well. Mine was definitely a penalty but it’s quite easy for the ref to judge.

Then there’s Vincent Kompany:

They played well towards the end. We had most of the chances, you miss a couple and all of a sudden you seem to lose control of the game. Ultimately we stayed strong. It’s a clean sheet and a good derby win. We have a certain way of playing and sometimes if players are off form it’s difficult, but we’re getting there and working every day to make sure we’re a better team than even last year.

A derby win is massive. For a minute, the league doesn’t matter, everything else doesn’t matter. We did our job about that, and we’ll do our job again on Wednesday.

For all that they were drawing at half-time and lost in the end, the second half was much more encouraging for United. For a start, there was an extended period when, despite having just 10 men and no defence to speak of, they near enough roared. Rooney played well. McNair did OK, Fellaini had his moments. It was all quite encouraging. That defence, though. Crikey.

Manchester City go third; United are ninth, behind Everton on goals scored and ahead of West Brom on goal difference.

90+4 mins: A little over 60 seconds to go, and United continue to press though City have shed themselves of the sense of uncontrolled panic.

90+3 mins: The corner flies straight to the first defender, Clichy, who miscues his volleyed clearance and nearly scores a peach of an own goal. Another corner, which Di Maria again sends at Clichy. This time he heads clear.

90+2 mins: One minute down, four to go. United run up the other end and after good work from Wilson, win a corner.

90+1 mins: There will be at least five minutes of stoppage time. Twenty seconds into it Fernandinho crosses from the right and Touré heads over from six yards.

89 mins: That Kompany clearance goes for a throw-in, from which City win the ball and pass to Touré, who rolls his defender and sends a curling shot just wide of the post.

89 mins: Clearance of the day from Vincent Kompany, who just blindly thudded the ball 80 yards downfield, just to get it away for a bit.

86 mins: Demichelis gives the ball away in his own half, really quite stupidly, and Rooney tees up Di Maria for a shot that’s deflected and spins up into Hart’s clutches. Rooney tries to beat him to it, but gets nowhere near the ball, runs right into the goalkeeper and requires treatment.

85 mins: Fellaini heads it into Kompany and thence over the bar. City get a goal kick.

85 mins: United continue to exert pressure, with Rooney playing particularly well at present. They have a corner.

84 mins: City take Agüero off, and bring Fernandinho on. The goalscorer seems a bit miffed about this development, and trudges down the tunnel, muttering.

82 mins: City, clearly, have ceased rampaging. United are sensing vague possibility, and bring on James Wilson in place of Van Persie. “I don’t think he got anything right in the first half except Smalling’s two yellows,” counters Randal Smathers. “Either the Blind and the sweeping out of Van Persie a moment or two later are both yellow or neither [yes, that was a bit off – ed]; Clichy took three tries to haul down Januzaj on a break but no card, Hart gave Oliver a headbutt, and the Fellaini kick was a clear pen. Other than that, Oliver did great.”

81 mins: “I’m a referee, and was in an education session a few years ago where this kind of situation was discussed,” writes Colman O’Meara of Smalling’s first booking. “We were instructed that a caution is required, as blocking a keeper in this way comes under “acts in a manner which shows a lack of respect for the game.” - pg 123 of Laws of the Game.” So there you go.

80 mins: United win a free kick, 30 yards out, for which Fernando gets a booking. Di María sends it into orbit.

78 mins: Another United chance! A free-kick from deep finds Fellaini, eight yards out, who has run away from his marker and should just have headed in! Instead he missed the ball with his head, it hit his shoulder and bounced nowhere helpful.

77 mins: United double-chance! Rooney tricks his way into the penalty area but doesn’t have space for a shot, checks inside and runs into Demichelis. He asks for a penalty, but meanwhile the ball is rolled to Di Maria, whose low, hard cross-shot is well stopped.

75 mins: City hits the post! Navas takes on Shaw, sprints into the area, sprints a little further into the area, and then when he’s nearly out of area to sprint into he hits the ball against the post.

73 mins: United attack again, but Hart runs from his line to beat the onrushing forward to Fellaini’s through-ball.

Not really. The game started brightly, thanks in no small part to Michael Oliver’s attempts to let it flow, and refusal to wave cards unnecessarily. He hasn’t missed much. Sadly, most of what he has missed has been penalties but for at least one of those (the first) replays showed his view blocked by other players, and to my mind that was by some way the clearest of the three.

71 mins: Another substitution, Edin Dzeko replacing Jovetic.

71 mins: United have a chance! Van Persie spins away from Demichelis on the right, cuts into the penalty area and then shoots, low and hard, from an optimistic angle. Hart saves.

70 mins: A substitution for City, with Samir Nasri replacing Milner.

68 mins: United are attempting to defend in numbers and break in numbers, but just can’t really manage the bit in between, the part when everyone’s back defending and they need to somehow move upfield without giving the ball away. So basically they are defending in numbers.

65 mins: United throw a few men forwards, as now they must, and Van Persie crosses from the left, low, straight to a defender. “Can you perhaps clarify the rules on blocking the keeper?” asks John Zhu. “So Smalling stood in front of the keeper but didn’t really touch him. Doesn’t that mean any keeper can just boot the ball right next to an opposition defender and get them sent off?”

This seems to be the relevant section of the laws, though it doesn’t say a booking is mandatory.

61 mins: Di Maria’s fine free-kick flies through a crowded penalty area and out the other side.

60 mins: Agüero goes down in the penalty area again, with Fellaini again closest to him, and the referee is unimpressed again. This is probably the least likely of all three major penalty shouts, but all of them could feasibly have been given. Anyway, United stream down the other end, where Demichelis brings down Di Maria and is booked.

56 mins: The substitution is made, and 10-man United rely on a Carrick-McNair partnership to keep City at bay.

54 mins: Rojo is rolled onto a stretcher, grimacing in pain and receiving oxygen (or whatever it is).

53 mins: Talking of sliding tackles, Rojo seems to have self-injured in unsuccessfully attempting to get the ball off Demichelis. Looks like a fairly serious shoulder issue, and Paddy McNair’s moment has come.

51 mins: Sliding tackle of the day right there, from Wayne Rooney, who lost the ball to Touré and then chased him for 50 yards before choosing precisely the right moment to dispossess him.

49 mins: Agüero is played in, left of goal, but Rojo blocks his path and the chance goes (at least until the ball rolls, via a few defenders, to Jesus Navas, whose effort is blocked by Fellaini).

48 mins: United kind of nearly had an attack then. Rooney attempted a through-ball, anyway. It was cut out. “Sometimes I wonder whether footballers getting booked the way Smalling did for his first booking should be allowed to call themselves a ‘professional footballer’,” writes Mark Judd. “There was nothing professional about that.” An interesting idea: if there’s such a thing as a professional foul, should there also be the amateurish fluff?

The players are back out. Action imminent.

There are also the ones currently wishing they were injured, glumly contemplating setting about their own hamstrings with a screwdriver.

I’d say the 10 seconds of play that ended in Smalling’s red card has got to be one of the worst in United’s recent history. Half their team messed up in those few moments, cluelessly conceding possession, inexplicably deciding not to clear the ball to safety and wandering aimlessly out of position, all before the tackle itself, which was ineffably witless. “There are no words, there are no words for how I feel about Smalling right now,” sobs David J. “Two idiotic yellows in a game of this magnitude. LvG will not be impressed.” Nor anyone else, for that matter.

45+3 mins: Jovetic chips the ball towards the run of Touré, who goes down as Rojo slides in. Another decent penalty shout, though my instinct is that Touré played for the contact and tried to make the most of it, rather than actually attempting to score.

45+2 mins: United now have Valencia and Carrick in their back four, which isn’t enormously healthy. They do have an international centre-back on their bench in Paddy McNair, but clearly Van Gaal decided that some experience would be appropriate here.

45+1 mins: Talking of stoppage time, we’re going to have three minutes of it before the break.

44 mins: That was a very poor decision from young Michael Oliver, Fellaini kicking a whole lot of ankle. The stage is now set for 45 minutes (plus two lots of stoppage time) of siege.

43 mins: Meanwhile, a substitution: Carrick comes on for Januzaj.

43 mins: It could have got worse for United: Fellaini just took out Agüero in the penalty area and got away with it.

42 mins: There are a few people on Twitter wondering how exactly Joe Hart got away with this:

40 mins: Milner’s free-kick draws De Gea off his line and only just – just, though – misses Kompany’s forehead.

38 mins: United try to play the ball out of defence a couple of times. On one occasion they make it nearly as far as the halfway line before Fellaini gives it away, on the other they barely get out of their penalty area.

34 mins: Zabaleta and Jesus Navas both attack down the right, but instead of crossing the ball they just keep backheeling it to each other.

31 mins: The free-kick is swung into the box, bounces around a bit and is eventually picked up by Hart, whose attempt to boot the ball clear is hampered by Smalling standing in front of him. As a result, the United defender becomes the second player to be booked.

31 mins: Zabaleta slides in on Van Persie, on the left touchline, and gets his own share of ankle – but no yellow card. Several United players ask the referee why that might be.

29 mins: … Touré jogs up to the ball and hoists it leisurely into touch.

28 mins: Daley Blind slides in to poke the ball away from Touré, fails, gets ankle instead, gives City a decent shooting chance and earns the day’s first booking.

25 mins: Milner is caught fractionally offside as he runs on to Touré’s free-kick, but gets some measure of revenge a few moments later by sliding-tackling both Valencia and Januzaj in the space of about three seconds. The crowd roars its appreciation.

21 mins: Another great chance/save combo! Fernando slides the ball from the left into the path of Agüero, centrally. De Gea is out fast, and is basically on top of the Argentinian by the time the shot came in. It must be said, though, that Navas should have stuck the earlier opportunity away.

21 mins: Chance of the game, and a great save! A lovely move from City ands with a delicious pass to the feet of Jesus Navas, running beyond the defence. He reaches the ball six yards out, totally unmarked, and blasts high towards goal, only for De Gea to keep it out.

20 mins: Another nearly-chance for City, as Agüero bursts past Rojo, takes himself wide to the right of goal and then shoots at De Gea.

18 mins: In particular, Rooney is doing a much better job of stopping Touré from getting the ball when City have possession than Touré is of stopping Rooney.

16 mins: Another decent move from United, but at the end of it Shaw’s cross isn’t up to much. Still, this has been a fine start for the away side, who have certainly had the best of it so far.

14 mins: Di Maria crosses from the left, and when the ball drops, deep beyond the far post, Van Persie heads wide.

12 mins: Jesus Navas tries to go past Luke Shaw on the halfway line, and somehow conjures a free-kick out of the faintest hand-on-shoulder contact.

10 mins: Chance for United! Patient possession for United ends with a ball chipped into the area. Van Persie nods down for Januzaj, whose left-foot half-volley from the edge of the area is pretty hopeless.

8 mins: Saved! Agüero slips past Valencia with ease and blasts the ball at the near post from a pretty optimistic angle. De Gea beats it away with both arms.

7 mins: Two backheel flicks in as many seconds for City. The second sends the ball out of play for a throw-in. It’s a predictably high-tempo, low-precision start here.

4 mins: City get the ball into United’s penalty area for the first time, Navas crossing from the right. By the time the ball lands, though, it is about 10 yards beyond the penalty area. Goal kick.

4 mins: It should not go unnoticed that Fellaini executed a pirouette in the moment’s before that pass. It was really astonishingly elegant.

3 mins: United’s second attempt to infiltrate City’s penalty area ends like the first, with an assistant referee waving a flag. This time Van Persie was caught out as he ran on to Fellaini’s pass.

1 min: Demichelis pokes the ball away from Van Persie and the referee inexplicably blows his whistle. The free-kick is pitched into the area but at least two United players were offside, including Rojo, who headed it goalwards.

A final snipped of team news: Scott Sinclair replaces Clichy on the City bench.

“The support is at fever pitch!” we’re told by Sky. And this is what he’s referring to:

The players are out. Deep breath now, there’s just an anthem, some handshakes, a bit of coin-tossing and probably a last-minute ad-break to go until kick-off.

Gaël Clichy will now start, according to our own supremely well-informed Daniel Taylor.

The two managers have spoken to Sky. First, Manuel Pellegrini:

The team is very similar to the team that’s played the last games. We’ll continue playing the way I like to play. The key is to know from the beginning that we must be an aggressive team. There’s not much difference between the big teams, so we need to be concentrated and high intensity.

And this is what Louis van Gaal said:

Rafael is injured again, in training. For me, the decision [to drop Mata and bring Rooney back] was not difficult because he’s my captain and I think he’s very important in our team. He gives me another body in midfield and that’s why. More or less, we play like our philosophy is. It is always the same. We want to dominate. We want to have possession and we want to create chances, and we have to take into account the qualities of Manchester City, because in the last three years they were the champions two times. I have made my plans for my players, not for you.

Is it much colder in Manchester than it is in London, or is this kid extremely overdressed?

Here’s the Press Association’s take on the teams:

Wayne Rooney returned from suspension to lead United in Sunday’s Manchester derby at the Etihad Stadium. Adnan Januzaj and Marouane Fellaini retained their places after impressing against Chelsea, but there was a change at right-back, where Antonio Valencia replaced the injured Rafael. Juan Mata had to settle for a place on the bench for United while Manchester City opted to start with Stevan Jovetic up front instead of Edin Dzeko. Eliaquim Mangala was dropped for Martin Demichelis, who started alongside skipper Vincent Kompany at centre-back.

Sky show David Silva at the ground, on crutches. There’s enough talent in the City squad for them to win this game despite his absence, but us neutrals will miss him.

If you know your history

… well, you’re probably fine. If you don’t, or you’re simply at a loose end right now, these rather lovely videos might help. An oral history of today’s competing clubs, as told by their fans:

Teams in full, then. Wayne Rooney returns from suspension and replaces Juan Mata for Manchester United, who crowbar Antonio Valencia into the right-back post. City pick Jovetic over Dzeko in attack:

Man City: Hart, Zabaleta, Kompany, Demichelis, Kolarov, Jesus Navas, Touré, Fernando, Milner, Agüero, Jovetic. Subs: Sagna, Nasri, Dzeko, Caballero, Clichy, Fernandinho, Boyata.
Man Utd: De Gea, Valencia, Smalling, Rojo, Shaw, Blind, Fellaini, Januzaj, Di Maria, Van Persie, Rooney. Subs: Mata, Lindegaard, Carrick, Ander Herrera, Fletcher, McNair, Wilson.
Referee: Michael Oliver.

Team news! This just coming through on Twitter:

A couple of players have spoken to Sky this morning. Here are some highlights:

Aleksandar Kolarov:

We’ve had a difficult week and I think it’s an excellent game to try to win and start fighting for the title. Obviously without David Silva it’ll be difficult, because he’s a massive player with massive importance for us, but I think we have a lot of good players and in the best way they can replace him. We have to show we are playing

Chris Smalling:

It’s a game that’s going to be 100mph from the first whistle and we have to try to take command as soon as we can. There’s a lot of confidence, we’ve trained well all week and we need to make sure we get that win, because we need it.

In terms of form, this is seventh v eighth. A Manchester City win today would propel them into the top four of this particular table, and could push United into the bottom half in the process.

Hello world!

Manchester derby subtext update: the Sunday Mirror report today that the feud between Manchester City’s Sergio Agüero and United’s Marcos Rojo continues to simmer, several months after the defender enraged Agüero by inviting the Argentinian pop star Ezequiel “El Polaco” Cwirkaluk, ex-husband of Agüero’s girlfriend, into the team dressing-room after the World Cup victory over Nigeria. Upon learning that Rojo was also to appear at the event, Agüero cancelled an appearance at a coaching session for Mancunian children on Friday, saying he had to collect someone from the airport. Rojo suggested that “perhaps he is a little scared”.

All of which basically amounts to an excellent excuse for watching Argentinian pop music. Enjoy!