📅 September 12, 2026

The Manchester Derby in Full: 145 Years, 198 Games, and Why Sunday Is Number 199

By Mav Jones · Manchester United fan writer

Sunday’s game at Old Trafford is the 199th Manchester derby, and after 198 of them the aggregate score is 280 goals to 278 in United’s favour. That lead is eight months old. The two clubs were level at 278 each until Mbeumo and Dorgu scored in the 2-0 on 17 January, Carrick’s first match as head coach. Kick-off is 11:30 AM Eastern on Sunday 13 September, on Peacock, NBC Sports Network and Telemundo. What follows is the whole story of the fixture, in order, with the money and the politics left in, because you can’t explain why this game matters without them.

How to watch in the United States

• Kick-off: Sunday 13 September, 11:30 AM Eastern, 8:30 AM Pacific, 4:30 PM in the UK.
• Stream: Peacock. TV: NBC Sports Network, with Telemundo in Spanish. Jon Champion and Graeme Le Saux call it from Old Trafford, per NBC’s schedule.
• Confirmed line-ups: about an hour before kick-off, so 10:30 AM Eastern.
• The rest of the season: every kick-off is in Eastern time on the schedule page, and the US watch guide covers which service carries which competition.

A railway team and a church team, 1878 to 1894

Both clubs started as works teams in the industrial east of the city, within a couple of miles of each other. Newton Heath LYR was formed in 1878 by employees of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and played in green and gold. St Mark’s of West Gorton was a church side formed two years later. Neither was anyone’s idea of a big club.

They first met on 12 November 1881, a friendly that Newton Heath won 3-0 at West Gorton. The Ashton Reporter called it “a pleasant game”, which tells you how much the fixture meant at the time. The first competitive meeting was an FA Cup qualifying tie on 3 October 1891 at North Road, Newton Heath 5-1 Ardwick, and the first league derby came in the 1894/95 Second Division season, Newton Heath 5-2 at Hyde Road. Ardwick had become Manchester City that year. Newton Heath became Manchester United in 1902, after the railway club nearly went out of business.

The geography has flipped since. United moved west to Old Trafford on 19 February 1910 and lost the opening game 4-3 to Liverpool. City moved to Maine Road in Moss Side in 1923, then back east in 2003 to the stadium the city built for the Commonwealth Games. Since the 1974 Local Government Act, Old Trafford has sat in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford rather than the City of Manchester, which is the whole basis of the “you’re not even from Manchester” line. City’s ground is inside the city, on council land. More on that below, because it’s the most political fact in the fixture.

Meredith, the £10 and the union, 1905 to 1908

The rivalry’s first great transfer began with a ban. On the last day of 1904/05, City’s Billy Meredith was accused of offering Aston Villa’s Alec Leake £10 to throw the match. He was banned for 18 months. The FA’s inquiry then found City had been paying above the £4 maximum wage, as much as £7, and 17 City players were fined, suspended until 1 January 1907 and banned from ever playing for the club again.

United’s manager Ernest Mangnall bought the best of them. Meredith cost £500. Sandy Turnbull, Herbert Burgess and Jimmy Bannister came with him. United won their first league title in 1908 with City’s banned players in the side. The 1905 scandal did more than hand United a team. On 2 December 1907 Meredith and Charlie Roberts convened a meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Manchester that founded the Players’ Union, with City players in the room. It became the PFA. A derby transfer built United’s first champions and the union that every Premier League player still pays into.

The bombs, the rent and the record crowd, 1941 to 1949

On 11 March 1941 the Luftwaffe hit Trafford Park and one bomb took out Old Trafford’s Main Stand and scorched the pitch. City offered Maine Road the same week. United’s first “home” game there was on 5 April 1941 against Blackpool in the wartime North Regional League, in front of about 2,000 people. The arrangement, recorded in Gary James’s football archive, was £5,000 a year in rent plus a share of the gate. It ran until the Main Stand was rebuilt with £22,278 in reconstruction grants, and United went home in 1949.

The biggest crowd ever to watch a top-flight match in England watched United while they were City’s lodgers. On 17 January 1948, United drew 1-1 with Arsenal at Maine Road in front of 83,260, a figure Guinness still lists as the record. Only one English club match has ever drawn more, and that was also at Maine Road: City v Stoke in the FA Cup in 1934, 84,569.

The man rebuilding United in those years was a City player. Matt Busby played for City for eight seasons before the war and won the 1934 FA Cup with them, then took the United job in 1945. When his team’s plane crashed at Munich on 6 February 1958, one of the 23 dead was Frank Swift, City’s former goalkeeper, travelling as a News of the World journalist. The two clubs’ histories are braided together in ways the songs never admit.

1968 and 1974: the closest they’ve ever been

The spring of 1968 is the only time both clubs stood at the top at once. On 11 May, City won the title with a 4-3 at Newcastle, two from Neil Young and one each from Summerbee and Lee, while United lost 2-1 at home to Sunderland. It was City’s first championship since 1937. Eighteen days later United beat Benfica 4-1 at Wembley and became the first English club to win the European Cup. One city held the league and Europe, split down the middle.

Six years later came the goal everyone gets wrong. Tommy Docherty had let Denis Law go to City on a free in 1973. On 27 April 1974, with less than ten minutes left at Old Trafford, Law backheeled Francis Lee’s pass past Alex Stepney, didn’t celebrate, was substituted, and never played league football again. United supporters invaded the pitch, the referee abandoned the game with about five minutes left, and the 1-0 stood. It was the first match in English football stopped because of crowd disorder.

The myth is that Law relegated United. He didn’t. Birmingham beat Norwich that afternoon, so United were down whatever happened at Old Trafford, a point the match records make plain. Law himself later called the backheel a fluke. The image survives because it’s the perfect picture of what the fixture does to people: the club’s greatest goalscorer, in the wrong shirt, unable to raise his arm.

Ferguson’s derby, 1989 to 2013

Ferguson’s first derby season produced the result City fans still sing about. On 23 September 1989, newly promoted City beat United 5-1 at Maine Road in front of 43,246: Oldfield twice, Morley, Bishop and a Hinchcliffe header. It was the “Maine Road massacre”, and it was also the last time City beat United for 13 years. United’s answer came in November 1994, a 5-0 at Old Trafford that remains their biggest derby win.

The ugliest moment belongs to Roy Keane. On 21 April 2001, in a 1-1 at Old Trafford, he went over the ball on Alf-Inge Haaland, was sent off, fined £5,000 and banned for three games. When his 2002 autobiography said he had meant to hurt Haaland, the FA added five more games and £150,000. Haaland played four more times, all as a substitute, and retired at 30. His son has scored 300 club goals and plays for City on Sunday.

On 10 February 2008, four days after the 50th anniversary of Munich, both teams wore kits with no sponsor, United’s cut like the 1958 shirt, City’s with a black ribbon on the shoulder. The silence was held perfectly. City won 2-1 through Vassell and Benjani, with Carrick scoring in the 90th minute, City’s first league win at Old Trafford since Law’s backheel and their first league double over United since 1969/70. Seven months later, on 1 September 2008, the Abu Dhabi United Group bought the club for about £200m and signed Robinho for a British-record £32.5m the same day.

The rivalry’s modern tone was set in the following 12 months. Carlos Tevez left United for City on 14 July 2009 and a billboard at the bottom of Deansgate read “Welcome to Manchester”. Ferguson called City “a small club with a small mentality”. On 20 September 2009 United won 4-3 with Michael Owen scoring in the 96th minute, and afterwards Ferguson gave the fixture its most quoted line: “noisy neighbours”. In January 2010 Rooney’s 92nd-minute header settled a League Cup semi-final 4-3 on aggregate after Tevez had scored twice in the first leg.

Then 12 February 2011. Nani’s cross took a deflection, Rooney adjusted and put an overhead kick into the top corner past Joe Hart in the 78th minute for a 2-1 win. He calls it his most important goal for United; the Premier League named it the best of its first 20 years. Two months later City beat United 1-0 in the first FA Cup semi-final between the clubs, Yaya Touré scoring after Carrick lost the ball, and when City then beat Stoke in the final the “35 years” banner counting City’s trophy drought came down from the Stretford End.

Eleven months after the overhead kick, City won 6-1 at Old Trafford. Balotelli scored the first in the 22nd minute and lifted his shirt to show “Why always me?”, Evans was sent off, and United’s 37-game unbeaten home run ended with their heaviest home derby defeat since a 5-0 in February 1955. The 6-1 also matched City’s win at Old Trafford in January 1926, which had stood for 85 years as the record.

The 2011/12 title was decided across two weeks. United led by eight points in early April. On 30 April, Kompany headed a corner in on the stroke of half-time for a 1-0 at City’s ground that put City top on goal difference. On 13 May, with United having already won at Sunderland, Agüero scored against QPR at 93 minutes and 20 seconds and City won the league on goal difference, their first since 1968. Ferguson’s reply was the 9 December 2012 game: Rooney twice, City back to 2-2 through Touré and Zabaleta, then van Persie’s stoppage-time free kick deflected off Nasri past Hart. Ferdinand left the pitch bleeding from a coin thrown from the stands. United went six clear and won Ferguson’s 13th and last title.

The money and the politics of two stadiums

City’s ground was built by the public. The City of Manchester Stadium cost £110m between 1999 and 2002, almost all of it public money, with £77m from Sport England’s Lottery funds and the balance from the Lottery and Manchester City Council. Converting it from an athletics track to a football ground after the Commonwealth Games cost another £22m of council money. City took a 250-year lease in 2003, handed Maine Road to the council, and agreed to pay half of any ticket revenue above their old average, with rent reported at around £2m a year to start. A club a state now owns plays in a stadium a city council still owns.

United’s ownership story is heading the other way. Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought 25% in February 2024, took control of football operations, and has since gone to 28.94% with further investment. The club secured the land in summer 2026 for a 100,000-seat stadium beside the current one, a £2bn build it wants open for 2030/31 that would be the largest club ground in Britain. City, meanwhile, opened their expanded North Stand for the last game of 2025/26, taking the Etihad to about 61,500, and named it the Pep Guardiola Stand. He left that summer.

Then there’s the ownership itself. Amnesty International’s Gulf researcher called the UAE’s investment in City “one of football’s most brazen attempts to ‘sportswash’ a country’s deeply tarnished image through the glamour of the game”, as reported by Football365, and the organisation has flown protest banners over the ground for the jailed activist Ahmed Mansoor. City were charged by the Premier League in February 2023 with 115 alleged breaches of its financial rules covering 2009 to 2018. The hearing ran from 16 September to 6 December 2024. As of this month, more than 18 months later, there is still no verdict. City deny every charge. The possible outcomes run from cleared to expulsion, and none of them changes a result on Sunday.

Whatever the commission decides, the six seasons under investigation include the two titles City won in 2012 and 2014, and half of Manchester will keep an asterisk next to them until the ruling lands.

The Guardiola decade, 2016 to 2026

Guardiola and Mourinho arrived in the same summer of 2016, and Pep took charge of 27 derbies, a City record, winning 13 and losing 10. The one City fans want to forget is 7 April 2018. A win would have clinched the title; Kompany and Gündogan had them 2-0 up inside half an hour. Pogba scored in the 53rd and 55th minutes and Smalling won it in the 69th. The one United fans want to forget is 2 October 2022, when City were 4-0 up at half-time and Haaland and Foden both scored hat-tricks in a 6-3, the highest-scoring derby ever played.

The clubs then met in consecutive FA Cup finals, the first back-to-back derby finals since 1885. On 3 June 2023, Gündogan volleyed in after 12.91 seconds, the fastest goal in an FA Cup final, and City won 2-1 on the way to the treble. On 25 May 2024, Garnacho and Mainoo scored inside 40 minutes and United held on 2-1 after Doku’s 87th-minute goal. Mainoo, a Stockport-born academy player, was 19.

Under Amorim, United won at the Etihad on 15 December 2024 with two goals after the 88th minute: a Bruno penalty won by Amad, then Amad’s finish from a tight angle in stoppage time, Gvardiol’s header having put City ahead. City took the September 2025 derby 3-0, Foden and two from Haaland with Doku making the first two. Then January 2026: Mbeumo and Dorgu in the second half, 2-0, a seventh-placed United beating a second-placed City in Carrick’s first game, and the aggregate tipped to 280-278 for the first time in the fixture’s history.

Guardiola left in the summer after ten years and 17 major trophies, having lost the 2025/26 title to Arsenal, the first time in his career he had gone two seasons without a league. City appointed Enzo Maresca on a three-year deal on 29 June, paying Chelsea compensation for a mid-season exit; he had coached City’s youth team and been Guardiola’s assistant. The summer rebuild let Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Stones, Reijnders, Savio and Nico González go and brought in Elliot Anderson for £115m and Enzo Fernández for a joint British-record £125m. Sunday is Maresca’s first derby.

The record, and the men who crossed the line

• All-time, after 198 meetings: United 81 wins, City 62, 55 draws. Goals 280-278 to United.
• At Old Trafford: 86 derbies, United 38 wins, 23 draws, 25 defeats.
• Biggest wins: City 6-1 at Old Trafford twice, 23 January 1926 and 23 October 2011, and 5-0 there in February 1955. United 5-0 on 10 November 1994.
• Most goals in one derby: nine, City 6-3 United, 2 October 2022.
• Top scorers: Wayne Rooney 11 in 25 games, the record. Joe Hayes and Francis Lee 10 each for City. Rashford has six; a seventh on Sunday puts him level with Scholes and Viollet.
• Most appearances: Ryan Giggs, 37.
• Played for both: Meredith, Law, Brian Kidd (who also coached both), Peter Schmeichel, Andy Cole, Carlos Tevez and Owen Hargreaves among them. Busby played for City and managed United.
• Managers’ derby records: Guardiola 27 games, 13 wins, 4 draws, 10 defeats. Carrick 1 game, 1 win.

Sunday: derby 199

City are top on nine points from three under Maresca, unbeaten in all competitions, with Haaland on five goals in four games and 300 for his clubs. Doku is out with a calf injury. United are 11th on four points after losing at Hull, beating Ipswich 5-2 and drawing at Everton, then beat Sabah 4-0 on Thursday for the first clean sheet of the season. Baleba, Amad, de Ligt, Ugarte and Heaton are out. Shaw is a doubt, and Bruno was filmed limping out of Old Trafford on Thursday night with no injury named since. Opta’s model, quoted by Al Jazeera, gives City a 44.2% chance and United 31.6%.

The XI we want to see is the side that started at Everton with Sesko in for Cunha. The counter-argument is Old Trafford. United have won nine of ten home games since Carrick took over, and a win on Sunday makes him only the third United manager to win his first two league derbies, after Alf Albut in 1895 and John Bentley in 1913. Bruno has seven goal involvements in his last ten against City. United’s own programme scouts City’s shape as a back three in possession with both full-backs stepping inside, which leaves the ground behind them to whoever runs into it first, and that’s the case for Mbeumo and Rashford before a ball is kicked.

Derby 199 finished United 0-1 City, ten-man City, and the aggregate is 280-279 after 199 games and 145 years. That’s the fixture. Line-ups at 10:30 AM Eastern, kick-off at 11:30 on Peacock.

Sources: Head-to-head totals, biggest wins, scorers and appearances from Wikipedia — Manchester derby, cross-checked against United’s derby programme (see the programme read linked above) and Al Jazeera’s preview. Old Trafford’s opening: Wikipedia — Old Trafford. 1905 scandal and Meredith’s move: Wikipedia and the Spartacus Educational; the Players’ Union from the PFA’s history. Bombing and Maine Road terms: Gary James; the 83,260 crowd: Guinness World Records. Law 1974: Goal and Gary James. 1989: mancity.com. Stadium funding and lease: Wikipedia; North Stand: StadiumDB; new Old Trafford: manutd.com. Amnesty: Football365 and Amnesty UK. The 115 charges: FourFourTwo. 2024 final: The FA; December 2024: Premier League; Maresca: Sky Sports. US broadcast: NBC Sports. Accurate as of 12 September 2026.