Ruben Amorim insisted he will read nothing into Manchester City’s poor start to the season as he prepares his United side for Sunday’s derby.
For all the scrutiny there has been on United’s start – which has yielded four points from a late win over Burnley, a draw at Fulham and defeat at home to Arsenal – they go into Sunday one point better off than City, who have suffered back-to-back defeats against Tottenham and Brighton.
It is the first time since December 2020 that United will start a derby above City in the Premier League table, even if it is only three matches into the season, but Amorim said the challenge of facing Pep Guardiola’s side was as hard as ever.
All eyes on Sunday 👀 pic.twitter.com/3F5K0G4hRg
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) September 10, 2025
“It’s the same thing,” he said. “It’s a top team with, for me, the best coach in the league. A team that is really hard to imagine how they are going to play, they change all the time.
“But we are prepared for that and we believe in our team and I have that feeling, so it will be a very good game. We know what to do. We have one more training (session). The table, in the moment, it doesn’t matter.
“I’m just worried about maintaining the same principles – the way we fight for every ball, the small details that sometimes we drop a little bit. (But) not in these games. So I’m more comfortable in these kind of games. But we will be ready against a very, very good team.”
United went into last week’s international break on the back of a 3-2 win over Burnley, secured through Bruno Fernandes’ penalty seven minutes into stoppage time.
That was much needed after their shock Carabao Cup exit at the hands of League Two Grimsby – a result which prompted Amorim to say he would use the international break to take stock of his United team and seek fixes to their problems.
“I did everything,” Amorim said when asked how he had used the break. “I watched a lot of games. I tried to understand different things. I talked to Jason (Wilcox, director of football), I talked to Omar (Berrada, chief executive).
“I tried to anticipate scenarios. We had the market closing in this break. I tried to do everything in this kind of break to prepare for the future.”
Sunday’s match will see Amorim come up against his former director of football Hugo Viana. The pair were hugely successful working in tandem at Sporting Lisbon, winning two league titles and two league cup titles together.
But they are now on opposite sides of the same City, with Viana succeeding Txiki Begiristain as City’s director of football this summer.
“It has no influence,” Amorim said of their friendship going into the derby. “We have different jobs, we have different clubs. We have dinner all the time (but) we don’t talk about football.
“I’m red, he’s blue. But we are really, really close friends. That will not change. I hope to win on Sunday and that’s it.”
