Manager doesn’t just need better players, he needs his bosses to respect Old Trafford’s passionate loyalists

People travelled for that. People got on planes, decanted liquids into 100ml bottles, queued at passport control, booked taxis and hotels, set the alarm for 4.30am, counted down the days, for that. People braved Northern trains and Avanti West Coast, negotiated the closure of the M67, for that.

And so the first thing you really have to say is: fair play, those people. It was Ed Woodward seven years ago who most strongly articulated the vision of the modern Manchester United, a world in which “playing performance doesn’t really have a meaningful impact on what we can do on the commercial side”.

• Supporters involved in derby abuse ‘should be ashamed’
• Amorim admits his United side ‘are suffering a lot’

Pep Guardiola stated that the Manchester United fans who chanted abuse at Manchester City’s Phil Foden about his mother during Sunday’s goalless derby lacked “class”.

The invective was directed at the winger during the first half when City attacked the Stretford End at Old Trafford. Guardiola was asked about the chant.

The points were shared in a turgid game which showed how much work both teams must do to challenge at the top again

Fun fact: at least one Manchester club has finished in the top three in every Premier League season but one – 2015-16, when Leicester, Arsenal and Tottenham were on the podium. City have work to do to keep that record alive this season.

Here’s Pep Guardiola on Kevin De Bruyne: “Of course there’s emotion, one decade here, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be focused on what he needs to do.” On Omar Marmoush: “He has done well, his numbers, movement off the ball and getting in behind.” And on Nico O’Reilly: “Nico is young, he has to improve but he has great physicality and is strong at set pieces.”

Blunt and tame, the 196th Manchester derby was a curio that failed to ignite despite the cross-town rivalry, conjuring memories of the last goalless affair of this sort here, in December 2020, before an empty Old Trafford, owing to Covid.

This edition can be rated slightly better yet, towards the close of play, when the substitute Joshua Zirkzee swung a boot at Patrick Dorgu’s cross and connected cleanly, the crowd perhaps sensed Ederson would save because a stalemate seemed so inevitable.

• Limited budget expected to bolster squad this summer
• ‘Trying to see gaps we have in our squad’

Manchester United will ­prioritise signings for Ruben Amorim’s system this summer rather than big names, the head coach has revealed.

United have little left to play for in the Premier League but host Manchester City on Sunday seeking to complete a double over their city rivals for the first time in five years. The manager who oversaw that success, in the 2019-20 season, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, sought a cultural reset when taking over at Old Trafford, but his reign ended in October 2021 after a number of marquee transfers, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho, misfired.

Against a backdrop of internal strife, facing their sky blue rivals provides a struggling team with chance to rebuild the brand

This brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, this collection of generic spires with a massive plastic handkerchief chucked over the top. Three weeks on from first sight of the conceptual drawings for Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s stately pleasure dome, also known as the proposed Manchester United Stadium Soccer Product Hub, there is still a sense of double-take about the whole thing.

Early impressions of the new ground ranged from a defunct Venusian mercury mine, to Dubai Butlin’s, to a pointed corporate monument to our divided world. Welcome to the Staff Lunch Arena, embodiment of the 21st-century conviction that if you just stopped buying so many sandwiches and also fired the tea lady you could probably afford a vast and unattainable house.

Amid club’s scoring struggles we run through the centre-forwards, from Rooney to Zirkzee, since Alex Ferguson’s exit

Centre-forward only statistics: Games 63 Goals 26 Assists 14 Mins 5,196

The same economic forces that led to stagnation today are already in practice at the world’s biggest clubs

The problem with running a modern top-flight football club is that raising revenue is hard to do. Once you’ve grabbed your slice of league-wide media rights, made a vaguely colonial-sounding pre-season tour of the “Far East,” stitched up some sponsorship deals with a gambling company or a country’s tourism agency, and shipped as many shirts as the global merch market can handle, you hit the ceiling of your earning capacity. At that point, as a club, what do you do?

You can raise ticket prices, which risks alienating fans and the local community you’re supposed to represent. You can try your hand at a few miserable little crypto or AI plug-ins to build “engagement” among supporters or become a pioneer in the nascent field of fan “activations,” with limited potential returns. You can promise to build a new 100,000-seat stadium, but that takes time and money and doesn’t solve your immediate (or even future, should you go into debt to finance the project) need for cash. You can flog off a hotel or two to a sibling subsidiary of your parent company, though for that you need to start off with a couple of hotels. You can hope to sell to a monied investor, but the days of loss-indifferent billionaires making vanity investments in clubs seem over, and there are only so many publicity-hungry sovereign wealth funds to go around.

Curtis Jones is not a long-term fix at right-back for Liverpool, Tyler Dibling is a wanted man and Arsenal are depleted

When Arsenal next visit Merseyside on 11 May their first act may be to form a guard of honour for Liverpool, who could by then be newly crowned Premier League champions. The title appears destined for Anfield – Arsenal have been unable to sustain a consistent challenge for it all season – but Mikel Arteta will feel duty-bound to delay the seemingly inevitable for as long as possible on his return to Everton. Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid may be the priority for Arsenal but rotating is hardly an option for Arteta at Goodison Park given he has four defenders available. A makeshift unit would benefit from a demanding afternoon together before welcoming Real to the Emirates. Arne Slot claimed it is unfair on Everton to have an early Saturday kick-off after Wednesday’s Merseyside derby. Depleted or not, Arteta’s team should take advantage. Andy Hunter

Everton v Arsenal, Saturday 12.30pm (all times BST)

Crystal Palace v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Ipswich v Wolves, Saturday 3pm

West Ham v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm

• ‘I will not have the time. We have to get it right, fast’
• Manager put Harry Maguire up front as late substitute

Ruben Amorim bemoaned Manchester United’s toothless attack as Nottingham Forest completed a Premier League double over his side and reiterated he is under pressure to ensure his team “get it right fast”.

Forest enhanced their chances of qualifying for the Champions League with a third successive league win, courtesy of an extraordinary counterattack goal by the former United forward Anthony Elanga, while United are 13th and yet to record back-to-back wins in the division this season.

Forest completed their first league double over United since 1992 thanks to Anthony Elanga’s glorious nine-second 93-yard dash

2 min: Gibbs-White chases a long pass down the left. He can’t get past De Ligt, who initially looked out of position and did well to get back to stop the Forest man nipping away.

Manchester United get the ball rolling. Nuno looks relaxed in the dugout, Amorim smiling as he prowls the touchline. Here we go, then.

At the weekend the lasting shot was Ryan Yates haring towards the Nottingham Forest supporters in celebration and here another episode at breakneck speed earned victory. This time the subject was Anthony Elanga, who tore up the City Ground turf, eating up 85 metres in nine exhilarating seconds, to score the only goal of the game against his former club and maintain Forest’s unlikely push to qualify for the Champions League.

The other moment that Forest may look back on as pivotal if they go on to earn a place in the game’s grandest club competition arrived six minutes and 18 seconds into stoppage time. Harry Maguire, thrown up front as an unconventional striker, a needs-must move by Ruben Amorim, prodded the ball goalwards but Murillo hacked it off the line with almost the last kick of the game. A few seconds later, with Forest’s first league double over United since 1991-92, when Brian Clough was in charge, secured, Rockin’ All Over the World blared over the speakers and the locals set off a round of fireworks that soared into the sky above Trent Bridge.

• Manager says captain is crucial to challenge for titles
• Harry Maguire and Leny Yoro fit for Forest trip

Ruben Amorim has said Bruno ­Fernandes is “not going anywhere” this summer after Manchester ­United’s captain was linked with a move to Real Madrid.

Fernandes has again been United’s standout player this season, scoring 16 goals in 44 matches, including seven in the past seven games. In 277 United appearances Fernandes has 95 goals and 81 assists.

Manchester City’s fire still burns bright, Marcus Rashford reminds critics of his ability and Eberechi Eze’s great week

A seventh semi-final in succession showed that Manchester City, at least, see magic in the FA Cup. The quarter-finals saw them cast as unwelcome outsiders, lacking the romance of their fellow hopefuls. None of the other seven had won a major trophy this century, four never in their history. Pep Guardiola’s frenzied reaction after Omar Marmoush scored his team’s second at Bournemouth showed his fire still burns brightly. Surely nearing the end at City, Kevin De Bruyne played the 90 minutes, remaining influential and mobile throughout. He and his teammates have played better this season but this display at the Vitality saw real gutsiness, a key part of the makeup during the glory years. If the hosts, shorn of Dean Huijsen and Milos Kerkez, were incapable of holding City’s hand to the fire as they had in November, a new City is emerging. Nico O’Reilly added impetus from the bench. So did Marmoush, both offering the pace, strength and vigour their manager now desires. John Brewin

Match report: Bournemouth 1-2 Manchester City

Match report: Preston 0-3 Aston Villa

Match report: Brighton 0-0 Nottm Forest (3-4 on pens)

Match report: Fulham 0-3 Crystal Palace

• Protest staged at FC home game against Stockton
• Sit-in demonstration to be held at Manchester derby

FC United of Manchester and The 1958, a Manchester United fan group, held a joint action against United’s 20-year Glazer ownership, with The 1958 announcing they will stage a sit-in at next Sunday’s derby with Manchester City at Old Trafford.

Around 200 FC and United supporters gathered at Broadhurst Park before FC’s hosting of Stockton Town in the Northern Premier League Premier Division. Outside the ground flares were let off in the red of FC and United along with green and yellow ones, the colours of Newton Heath, United’s founding name. Anti-Glazer chants and songs were sung by fans, with one displaying a flag that showed an image of the former United forward, Eric Cantona, and the legend “Eric the King”.

Eddie Howe’s team will celebrate their Carabao Cup win on Saturday but there can be pitfalls along the way

When the celebration of Newcastle’s first trophy in decades became a point of heated civic discussion, it served as a reminder that party planning can be problematic.

“Extensive work and long-term planning behind the scenes have continued with Newcastle City council, Northumbria police, Freemen of Newcastle, the North East Combined Authority, NE1, Nexus and the emergency services,” groaned a club statement this week, ending fevered speculation that Saturday’s ticketed, controlled event on the Town Moor would be the only place to see Eddie Howe, Dan Burn et al show off the Carabao Cup and/or thank Yasir al-Rumayyan for the Saudi Arabian riches that funded success.

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Something that goes viral now and again is the particulars of the house sale of someone rich, famous and very possibly lacking in taste. Sure, that saloon bar created in the style of the East End pub off Goodnight Sweetheart felt like a good idea at the time, as did that mirrored master bedroom ceiling adorned in the style of Jeff Koons’ Cicciolina period. How will it sell on the open market? Quartz and pine are very much out, and as for that kitchen island … how much are they going to have to lower the price to get shot? It’s a doer-upper, surely.

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• United United Day a first formal linking of clubs’ fans
• Chelsea would have to pay £5m to send Sancho back

FC United of Manchester and The 1958, a Manchester United fan group, are staging a joint action on Saturday to “unite” against 20 years of Glazer ownership of Manchester United.

The protest, called United United Day, marks a first formal attempt by FC United and a Manchester United supporter group to link forces since the non-league club’s foundation in 2005, which caused some division between fans.

A £2bn new arena for Britain’s biggest football club will bring regeneration to the surrounding area. But matchgoing supporters are right to be circumspect

Visitors to Salford’s Lowry art gallery this summer will be able to enjoy a new take on one of the greatest paintings about sport. Depicting thousands of supporters bent purposefully towards a 1950s football stadium, LS Lowry’s Going to the Match has become part of the iconography of the national game. As part of its silver jubilee celebrations, the gallery is staging an immersive experience of the painting, including a nostalgic soundtrack evoking the sounds of a lost world.

So much for the past. Barely a mile away from the Lowry, at Manchester United’s Old Trafford base, it is the ghosts of football’s future that are being summoned up. To great fanfare, this month the club unveiled computer-generated images of Lowryesque hordes approaching the new £2bn stadium it hopes to build by 2030.

Could Norman Foster’s £2bn design for the club, which will be seen 25 miles away, turn out to be a case of hubris before ruin?

There’s a phenomenon in architectural history whereby great empires build their grandest monuments just before they fall. The Parthenon was completed just before Athens embarked on the devastating Peloponnesian War. Manhattan’s most celebrated skyscrapers went up on the brink of the Great Depression. The British inaugurated the imposing government buildings of New Delhi 16 years before the end of the Raj. I won’t say that this will definitely be the case with the £2bn stadium designed by the Mancunian Norman Foster for Manchester United Football Club, but it’s striking that it’s proposed at a time when the club has closed its staff canteen and made redundant hundreds of workers to cut costs.

Every good thing is promised. It is to be “the world’s greatest football stadium”, iconic AND sustainable, with both rainwater harvesting and a “trident” of 200m-high masts visible from 25 miles away. There is to be a “public space” twice the size of Trafalgar Square and a “mixed use mini-city” around it. There are things to like about the plans, including an attempt to avoid the fortress-like exteriors presented by most stadiums in favour of something more open and lively. But they’d probably do well to concentrate on doing fewer things as well as possible. Otherwise, the building might be like one of those football teams made up of extravagant signings who somehow don’t gel.