The So, Hello everybody no one was expecting this but I was talking to Rob Pollard, the Manchester City Correspondent for Bleacher Report and

Manchester Evening News journalist on Twitter and he said,

oi, get me on a podcast.

So I thought, hey, let's do a bonus episode so I'm delighted to be joined by Rob how you doing I'm very good thank you we should have got you on the proper podcast but a lapse in planning is what is what led to it happening now instead and are you

excited about the Darby I am incredibly excited about the Darby I mean I wrote a piece

this week that just sort of said how different this one feels and how different it could be on the pitch

compared to certainly last seasons but for me the last three seasons I mean if you go back to

you know Manchini threatening to tear- down banners that were mocking city for 35 years of no

trophies and Fergi calling city noisy neighbors and banners going up on Dean's Gate and all that kind of thing. The last three years has been slightly damp, shall we say.

I think he's been a reflection of the managers. I think Pellegrini was never one to kind of use the media to his advantage or try and

fan the flames. I think Van Hal's language towards the end of his time was increasingly defensive and he was becoming

increasingly suspicious of the media and so you had a situation where the build-up to the

Darby's last season were really kind of

sort of lacked intensity really and then I think the games reflected that I mean the

second one had some kind of narrative in the sense that you know Rashford made a bit of a dummy of a of an experienced defender and became the youngest scorer in a Derby which was a great story but other than that I think if you look at the

two games they were they were lacking a lot of what we would have you know

come to expect from the fixtures so I don't think there's any

danger of that this time given that a the two teams look a hell of a lot better

than they did last season and b you've got managers who don't necessarily like each other and put also know how to

operate and use the media to their advantage.

I think it's sort of interesting, isn't it, that you've got this the rivalry obviously exists

and is fierce and passionate between the two clubs even if the kind of on-pitched stuff has

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