The final Manchester derby of the season is a matter of hours away.
City, whose chances of finishing Pep Guardiola’s first season at the club with a trophy were ended by Arsenal on Sunday, are just a point above fifth-place United in the table ahead of the match at The Etihad Stadium.
A win for the home side will help them tighten their grip on a place in the top four, severely denting United’s chances of finishing in the Champions League places at the same time.
Jose Mourinho’s side will be without Zlatan Ibrahimovic for the game following the knee ligament damage he sustained in the game against Anderlecht last week. Despite his absence, Guardiola pointed out that United had plenty of other attacking qualities available when discussing the game with members of the press at a recent press conference.
“Ibra is an excellent player,” he said. “But they have [Jesse] Lingard and [Marcus] Rashford,” he added. “They are good players as well.”
And this is where things started to become a little bit strange between the two clubs and their official Twitter accounts…
Summarising Guardiola’s press conference, the person in charge of City’s official Twitter account mistakenly added an extra ‘a’ to Lingard.
This was picked up on by United’s official account, who corrected the spelling with a winking-face emoji.
After United’s correction had clocked up a few retweets, City responded by posting a winking-face emoji of their own, accompanied by that well-used Alan Partridge ‘this-is-great-banter-it-really-is’ meme.
Clearly, this is very important sports news, hence the reason it isn’t just us that have decided to cover it…
What a world pic.twitter.com/SuWuVWjx42
— Jack Gaughan (@Jack_Gaughan) April 26, 2017
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