Have you noticed that the club Sir Alex Ferguson described as the “noisy neighbours” have turned the volume down recently? Manchester City go by the policy now of achieve first, talk afterwards, whereas for years it was the other way round. The people at the top of the club do one interview a year. They have a manager who has made an art form of saying nothing and the days have gone when foreign signings are drilled to say the club have more local supporters than Manchester United, like language students reciting lines of revision.

The club that gave us the “Welcome to Manchester” billboards when Carlos Tevez switched colours operate with a different strategy now and, if anything, the noise emanates from the other side of town. Manuel Pellegrini’s press conferences can make him seem as grey as the Spitting Image puppet of John Major, whereas the equivalent show in Spain, Las Noticias del Guiñol, has Louis van Gaal with a block of bricks as his head, shouting at everyone and throwing his arms around.

Van Gaal came out of last Saturday’s game against Everton saying that the time to talk about winning the title would arrive “next week when we win against Manchester City”. It is coming up for 18 months since Sir Bobby Charlton promised that “next year we will be No1 in Manchester” and Ferguson, the old mischief-maker, still seems keen to get in on the act judging by his clipped response, during an event at Bridgewater Hall a few weeks back, when someone asked about Abu Dhabi’s influence on the football landscape. “They’ve done a lot,” was all he would offer, “in terms of renovating that part of the city.”

The impression it leaves sometimes is that United, however vigorously they would deny it, might be more worried about City than the other way round, and not just because they have spent so long in the wing mirrors of Pellegrini’s team.

Everyone should be fully aware now that Sheikh Mansour and the Abu Dhabi United Group are here for the long term, intent on creating a dynasty, and it has certainly been intriguing to learn how United, with their heavy emphasis on youth development, have been put out by the way City have been locating and recruiting the best young prospects for their academy. It went under the radar at the time but the Times recently reported there was a point last year when United gave serious thought to complaining to the Premier League about some of the “overzealous” tactics that had been used and even talked internally about requesting not to play their neighbours. What is not clear is what those tactics allegedly were but, plainly, a story of that nature is damaging for City. That, in turn, has left a suspicion on their side of sour grapes or, worse, a deliberate smear, now it is widely accepted that City have the superior setup.

All that can really be said for certain is that United never went through with the threat, whether it was genuine or not, and the disquiet behind the scenes – resentment, insecurity, jealousy, call it what you will – is still there.

When the two sides faced each other across a variety of age groups last month, United lost every fixture apart from one, which was drawn, including a 9-0 defeat in the under-14s that led to conversation high up at the club, apparently involving Ferguson. City’s under-13s and under-10s are currently the national champions. Their under‑15s began the season by scoring six goals against Liverpool in 40 minutes and the under-16s have won their first 10 games, accumulating 57 goals in the process (including 10 against Middlesbrough and nine against Sunderland in successive weeks). It is taking time but that village-sized training complex off Alan Turing Way is shaping up to become the production line of all productions lines. Already, the club have 26 youth internationals, aged 16 to 19, on their books. Fourteen of them play for England and 66% of their academy players come from Manchester.



Our guide to the Manchester derby Guardian

For a club with United’s history, it is no wonder this is causing alarm, even if they can cite an under-21s title last season. When Van Gaal spoke to the press on Friday it was in the building named after Jimmy Murphy, the prolific nurturer of young talent during the Busby era. The walls were lined with photographs of Duncan Edwards and the other “Golden Apples” – Murphy never liked the “Babes” tag – and there is a wonderful statistic, stretching back to 1937, that United have gone 3,758 games with at least one homegrown player in their team or on the bench.

On that front, they have traditionally been a long way ahead of City and everyone else. On Friday, it was exactly 10 years since Micah Richards, the last academy graduate to become a first-team regular for City, made his debut. Since then, 27 other youth-team players have come through City’s ranks but, together, they have made only 122 starts and Pellegrini, with the demand for instant results, has been reluctant to use them in a way that could not be said of Van Gaal.

There is a feeling, however, within Manchester’s football circles that United may have become complacent behind the scenes. Nothing sums it up more than the way Robin van Persie, Darren Fletcher, Phil Neville and Andy Cole have chosen to send their sons to City and it is perplexing, to say the least, that Brian McClair announced in February he was leaving his role as United’s academy director to start a new job with the Scottish FA in May and has not been replaced eight months after the club were informed.

Let’s also consider a club-by-club breakdown of the 126 players called up by England at under-16 to under-21 level in August. Chelsea provided 17 of them, followed by City on 12, with Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal on 10, Everton eight, Southampton six and Newcastle five. The Old Trafford club contributed two, the same as Sheffield United and Reading, and fewer than Brighton and Fulham.

United, lest it be forgotten, have won the FA Youth Cup a record 10 times, eight more than City. Since 1932, more than 200 youth products have broken through at Old Trafford, amassing more than 18,000 senior appearances and 2,500 international caps, as well as World Cups, European Cups, the Ballon d’Or and Footballer of the Year honours, OBEs, knighthoods, league championships and all sorts of other trophies. Yet the warning signs have been in place for a while now. “The buzz in Manchester is that it is City now who have the better academy programme,” Paul Scholes said 10 months ago. “That it is City who are getting the better players in the local area. How that has happened, I cannot say definitively but it will come down to more than one factor.”

It helps that City pay for their youngsters to be educated at St Bede’s college, an independent grammar school where pass rates are five per cent higher than the national average. The academy has a gleaming stadium with 6,000 seats and the best facilities in the country but, as Scholes said, it is “about the coaching too” – and that, coming from someone with his allegiances, is a fairly damning appraisal.



Another one came in an article Tony Park, co-author of Sons of United, a book about the club’s youth team history, wrote for United We Stand fanzine. Park has been watching United’s youth teams since the late 1970s and is a distinguished voice on the subject. His view is that City’s new facility “puts us to shame” and that United have been guilty of complacency. “I have no doubt that Ferguson took his eye off the ball over his last few years in charge and, as many of his old tried-and-tested scouts moved on or retired, they were not replaced.”

The club, he says, are “breeding ‘nice’ footballers – players who might make it one day but certainly no one who excites. I look at the current setup thinking: ‘Where are the next batch of starlets? Where is the next George Best? Where is the next junior who lights up a football pitch?’”

At City, they believe they have plenty of those Golden Apples, and that all their prodigious planning and work behind the scenes is gradually coming to fruition. The next windfall is the one to look out for, even if it is not City’s way any longer to shout it from the rooftops.

Daniel Taylor’s City and United combined Manchester XI Guardian

Museum lowers its standards by raising Sun to hall of fame

Sun Jihai started 93 league games during six and a half years at Manchester City, in the bland old days before Abu Dhabi money transformed the club. That’s an average of about a dozen per season as City finished ninth, 16th, eighth, 15th, 14th and ninth again. His time at the club ended with an 8-1 defeat at Middlesbrough, moving to Sheffield United on a free transfer and keeping up that rather humdrum record, with 11 starts and one substitute appearance in the Championship.

He was an unremarkable full‑back and the most bewildering part of his induction into the National Football Museum’s hall of fame is that he does not even merit a place in City’s equivalent.

Twenty-one ex-players are honoured in City’s hall of fame. Sun is not among them and nobody has ever thought he should be. Instead, Sun has joined the names such as Sir Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and George Best on a list of 37 who are inducted on the national list, according to the museum’s own blurb, “to celebrate and highlight the achievements of the all-time top talents to grace the game in England”.

The normal selection process was bypassed and Sun was inducted on the say-so of a museum director, rather than the usual selection panel. More fool us, perhaps, for thinking the hall of fame was a genuine honour that should be cherished, rather than a gimmick or publicity stunt or, most likely, a political favour when the Chinese prime minister is in town. “A grubby little fix,” as the shadow sports minister, Clive Efford, called it.

The museum insists that nothing too much should be read from the fact Sun was inducted on the same day that Xi Jinping was given the red-carpet treatment and that it is to recognise his ambassadorial work as well as to coincide with the visit. It all feels highly unsatisfactory and, yes, Jozy Altidore must be hoping President Obama visits some time soon.

Rio and Terry a surprising reunion

Having attended every day of that trial at Westminster magistrates’ court in July 2012, the idea of Rio Ferdinand, John Terry and Ashley Cole lining up in the same team again is not something I could ever have imagined happening.

It did therefore come as a surprise to see that Ferdinand and Terry will renew their old centre-back partnership for the Unicef match at Old Trafford next month. Ashley Cole will play at left-back in a Great Britain side taking on a Rest of the World XI and, bearing in mind the words that were directed at Ferdinand’s younger brother, the former Manchester United player is showing an impressive level of forgiveness.