Ole Gunnar Solskjaer believes Manchester United’s players need to learn from our experiences in previous derby games this season, ahead of Sunday’s meeting with Manchester City.
This weekend’s clash at Old Trafford will see us do battle with our near neighbours for the fourth time so far this campaign, with United winning two of those three derbies.
However, that one defeat came when we last hosted Pep Guardiola’s men – during the semi-final first leg of the Carabao Cup – when City emerged with a 3-1 victory.
After suffering a bruising experience last time at the Theatre of Dreams, Ole feels the key to victory on Sunday could come from avoiding the same pitfalls which befell us during January’s clash.
“When you're at home, you have to open up against a team like Man City and they will exploit that if you're not 100 per cent,”
the boss explained during Thursday night’s pre-match press conference.
“Sometimes, being at home with your fans, you want to show them what you can do and you want to beat your opponent. Sometimes you open up too many spaces and that's what we did for 10, 15 or 20 minutes, whatever we did after they scored a worldie [Bernardo Silva's opening goal].
“Before then, it wasn't a problem before Bernardo scored in the top corner. So that wasn't an issue until our heads went for a little while, so we've got to control our emotions more. And we have learned so that's an experience that we'll bring into this game, definitely.”
Having already played City several times in recent months, Ole feels his side are fully aware how the visitors will set up at the weekend, meaning our approach will alter slightly in the days ahead of the encounter.
“Four times in a few months, so there's not going to be any video [briefing] tomorrow [Friday] or Saturday because we've played them so many times,”
he admitted
“I think it helps, because my team is still developing. Our team now is developing and you want to play against the best. We need to learn and they've been the best in the last few seasons and, for us, it's a great challenge.“
After winning the last five games in all competitions, Ole also feels City will head into Sunday’s derby high on confidence.
“They'll feel confident, they've hit form, they're playing well,”
he said.
“They've just been at the Bernabeu, winning there [against Real Madrid] as well, and they won the Carabao Cup final [against Aston Villa].
“So I'm sure they'll come confident, they'll play their own game and we'll play our game and hopefully it will be a good one.
“Let's hope [Sunday] is a 4-3 like we've seen before,”
he added.
“There have been many classics and we'll do what we can to make it a classic.”
