The thing to remember about Manchester City is that Jose Mourinho is their ideal manager. Their ideal manager for Manchester United, of course.

In that respect, his comments are correct. City do not need him to sell their shirts, or their TV show, or their club, but he certainly helps. It is good for them to have an antagonistic rival.

They have been spoiling for this fight since the marketing department waved through posters welcoming Carlos Tevez to Manchester in 2009.

Jose Mourinho is the ideal Manchester United manager - as far as rivals City are concerned

Playing the best football will only get you so far. What the modern world requires is personality, character, a back story, tension. They won't admit it, but City have been waiting for it to kick off between Mourinho and Pep Guardiola for two years.

It wasn't planned that way because, all the time they strived to recruit Guardiola, City had no way of knowing Mourinho would turn up across the road. But once it happened: bring it on. Mourinho was City's perfect appointment.

It helps that he is struggling, too. It wouldn't be so wonderful if United had been the club finishing 19 points clear last season, obviously. But this way City get the best of both worlds. They are the No 1 team in Manchester and the country — but also get to bounce off the fascination with all things Mourinho and United.

It is a Mourinho story when he snaps and berates the neighbours for lacking class over their television content — but, clearly, it's a City story, too. And that is what they need: to be talked about, to be the centre of attention.

They need to leave Mourinho like Jack Nicholson's Joker, punching a hole in the television.

'Will somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in,' he asks, 'when a man dressed up as a bat gets all of my press?'

Don't think City's increasing media profile is happy coincidence, either. Even if Guardiola had not so plainly been an upgrade on the management skills of Manuel Pellegrini, a change was needed to maximise City's potential.

Manchester City have been spoiling for this fight with United since the Carlos Tevez poster

The club had to become interesting beyond the locality, and Pellegrini was not a manager who talked, or would get talked about.

It is not enough for City's football to be entertaining; the club must be, too. It must represent an image, make a statement, as football's biggest entities do. This is not simply a sporting project.

It is United's shirt sales, measured in millions, that City covet — not just their sustained success under Sir Alex Ferguson.

City regard shirt sales as more important than numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook hits. The purchase of a shirt is a literal investment in the club. It is the exchange of hard cash for a look, an image. These colours represent me. These colours capture the way I wish to project myself.

United, in 2017, sold 2.85million — 560,000 more than their nearest rival, Real Madrid. A list of the top 10 shirt retailers ended with AC Milan on 650,000. City were not mentioned.

This is believed to have been rectified in the last year, but it is Liverpool and Arsenal that City are catching, not market leaders United, and yes, the global audience in particular is fickle and responds to success and star attractions.

If City are consistent over the next two decades, they could feasibly sit beside the biggest names in world football, but 20 years is a long time. A lot can change, a lot can go wrong. Who knows how long the Guardiola era in Manchester will last?

There is a feeling this is their chance and they must make the most of it. City think ahead. That is why they formed what would become the City Football Group in 2012, and that was why in 2017, for a bargain £10m, they sold the inside story of their club to Amazon Prime.

It didn't seem a cheap deal at the time. City thought they had done rather well. Only now, looking at brilliant footage of Guardiola's team talks, insights into the basic humanity of superstars such as Sergio Aguero and David Silva, the heroic narrative in what proved to be a record-breaking season, does the price seem a steal.

City are No 1 and get to bounce off the fascination with all things Mourinho and United

Amazon did a superb job and the programme is truly compelling. The aim was to produce a documentary to rival 1997's Living With The Lions, which followed the British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa, and it has done that.

Certainly, no football project that follows this will be able to pull its punches on dressing-room coverage again. The Netflix series around Juventus, that never got through those doors, already feels unsatisfying and incomplete.

Is it everything? Of course not. City had sanction over elements that were commercially or personally sensitive, as was to be expected.

They know they come out of it well, but they still took a chance. When the cameras came in, City had no idea this was going to be a successful year. It could have been ordinary, like Guardiola's first campaign — no trophies and routine Champions League qualification. The whole process could have fallen flat, become a hubristic exercise.

When Graham Taylor invited a film crew to make a programme entitled An Impossible Job, covering England's attempt to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, he did not think they were going to capture excruciating footage of a failed, chaotic campaign.

He was going to pull off this impossible job. The film would be his vindication. He would triumph against the odds, against the critics, while under extreme pressure. He would show what a smart man and manager he was.

That it ended up being regarded as football's equivalent of This Is Spinal Tap, retitled and repackaged for DVD release using one of Taylor's impotent touchline protestations, Do I Not Like That, shows what can go wrong.

What if Manchester City had come fifth? What if Guardiola had done one of his bouncing, excitable team talks only for the players to next be seen trooping back in, having lost 2-0 to Bournemouth?

So why risk it? Why, from Manchester City's point of view, take the chance when no amount of content control could guarantee the club against public humiliation if last season had been less than memorable?

Amazon did a superb job with the City documentary and the programme is truly compelling

The answer can be found on the pages of newspapers. Not just in the positive headlines generated since Amazon released their footage, but in the large adverts taken out since before the start of the season for The Tunnel Club, the most expensive matchday experience City offer and one that remains largely available, despite having the best view in the Premier League.

The Tunnel Club promises an 'immersive experience' — going pitchside before the game, seeing the teams in the tunnel, a tactical talk from a City coach — plus the usual comfortable seats and fine dining. And you will watch the best team in the land.

Tickets for adults cost £510 and can still be bought for every home game, bar one. Manchester United, November 11. Would a United team last seen looking half-interested while losing to Brighton sell out an Old Trafford tunnel club? Certainly.

Would Liverpool, given that they were seventh in the global shirt sales table more than a year before reaching the 2018 Champions League final, make a tunnel club work at Anfield? Quite probably.

Yet City, with decades in Manchester United's shadow, and a local fanbase proud of being the antithesis to the global, corporate super-club cannot quite get there.

This luxury perch, this immersive experience based on similarly-pitched high-end tickets at Formula One, is a harder sell to them. No, Manchester City did not make a documentary with Amazon Prime to sell £510 seats for Newcastle on September 1 — but they did make one in an attempt to become the sort of club that could do, without having to wait 20 years for it.

And they got lucky. Not just with the magnetic Guardiola and his story, not just with the uplifting narrative of the season, but with the guest star.

'You know a movie without me doesn't sell much,' sniffed Mourinho, thinking he was belittling Manchester City when, in fact, he was playing into their hands.

He is just what they need and what Manchester United thought they would never become. He is the noisy neighbour.

Trippier is proof we must trust local talent

It was October 4, 2015, when Tottenham last scored a goal from a direct free-kick in the Premier League; two in the same game, in fact, both taken by Christian Eriksen.

That means it is close to three years since Eriksen last did his job from a dead-ball shooting position. Yet when Tottenham got a free-kick within range against Fulham on Saturday, he still insisted on taking it, ushering Kieran Trippier aside.

Eriksen missed, twice. Later in the game, when Trippier finally got over the ball in a similar position, he scored.

Kieran Trippier scored Tottenham's first Premier League from a direct free-kick since 2015

Tottenham are the last club one would single out for not affording English players opportunities, but does this not sum up the way homegrown players are viewed?

Trippier proved an excellent free-kick taker for England at the World Cup, but Eriksen was not demoted and too arrogant to step away. Imagine it the other way around.

If an English player had missed consistently for close on three years — including 16 times last season — and the club had a superb, foreign, dead-ball specialist on the staff, the lad from Bury would be told in no uncertain terms who the new taker was. Why didn't the same apply?

Why Burnley must embrace Europe

Well, that didn't take long. Burnley lost at home on Sunday, so the Europa League is to blame. That only five players — including Joe Hart, the goalkeeper — started against Watford and the previous Thursday against Istanbul Basaksehir is seemingly irrelevant.

Burnley, apparently, cannot remain competitive on two fronts. They are in the Premier League to fulfil fixtures and no more.

On a fans' forum the post: 'I hope Olympiakos is our last Euro tie this season' is being hotly debated. Some supporters genuinely want Burnley's first European campaign since the UEFA Fairs Cup in 1966-67 to be over before the end of August.

To do what, focus on a mid-table finish at best? Where is the fun in just hanging around, unless it leads to somewhere — like the Europa League?

Burnley's Europa League exertions have been blamed for defeat at home on Sunday

Eventually, Burnley will go down. Not because they're rubbish, just because they're Burnley. It happened to Stoke, to Middlesbrough, to West Brom, to Aston Villa.

There are clubs that move between the divisions, up and down. Some stay longer than others, but the rise and fall is inevitable.

A good manager leaves, players are sold, or some signings fail — there are plenty of reasons why a club gets relegated. Then what is there to remember? Not all those years of finishing 17th or even seventh, but those standout campaigns, a final or a rare night in Europe.

Burnley, managed by Sean Dyche, play Olympiakos, 44-times champions of Greece, on Thursday. Win over two legs and they could face one of the great names of European football: AC Milan, Lazio, Sporting Lisbon, Celtic. Burnley in the San Siro, imagine that?

or the majority, being in the Premier League is a means to that end, a door to something even better, something more exciting for your club. If you don't want that thrill, what is there? You really have only come to see United.

Where were you, Sports Minister?

For many years, Manchester United endured accusations of sexism and discrimination for not having a women's team. This year, happily, they relented.

That wasn't enough for some. Tracey Crouch, Minister for Sport, sneeringly congratulated the club on dragging itself into the 21st century.

Anyway, on Sunday, the future arrived. Liverpool Women versus Manchester United Women in the Continental Tyres Cup, two huge and traditional rivals, the game promoted with interviews, features and previews in every national newspaper last week.

Attendance: 829. What a pity those who berated Manchester United in columns, into microphones and through social media had something better to do that day.

For if they had all backed up those fine speeches with a backside on a seat — and that includes the posturing Minister — it would have sold out Old Trafford.

Even Albion's boiler is too dear for QPR

A figure dressed as a boiler is part of a new sponsorship deal at West Bromwich. Boiler Man is arguably the most bizarre match-day mascot and the source of much merriment.

It has also produced this season's best chant. 'Our f****** boiler,' the West Brom fans sang to QPR during Saturday's 7-1 win, 'he'd get in your team.'

Not if he cost money, he wouldn't, because Rangers are soon to face a transfer embargo, part of a clever Football League plan to kill football clubs.

Boiler Man is arguably the most bizarre matchday mascot and the source of much merriment

Poor executive management had already seen QPR relegated from the Premier League and treading water in the Championship, but that wasn't enough.

So £42m in fines, capitalised loans and legal costs later, Rangers are such a reduced force that they are no longer competitive, and a sobering lesson to any club with the temerity to have ambition.

Just imagine if Wolves were relegated this season. One imagines the Football League would find a way of busting them back to obscurity in no time.

Gloucester were upset by the RFU charge for Danny Cipriani. 'There is no precedent for a player being singled out in this manner,' said chief executive Stephen Vaughan. Yes, well maybe there should have been — and then behaviour like it wouldn't happen.