Bring it on, City!

BIGGIE FOR SMALLI...Chris cannot wait to face Manchester City again

CHRIS SMALLING believes Manchester United’s momentum that will have them at full throttle in time for the derby.

United have won eight games since losing to Tottenham at home in September, with an extra-time Capital One Cup defeat at Chelsea their only reverse.

While they will not lose focus on the games between now and the Manchester derby, the
revenge mission at the Etihad on December 9 is burning in the Red Devils’ subconscious.

Defender Smalling, 22, said: “We will be hoping we can go into that game all firing and give them something to really worry about. It’s going to be a massive game.

“It won’t decide the title or anything but it could go a long way in terms of how teams cope mentally, whether they win or lose in the subsequent games.”

Talking to Smalling, it is clear the pain of last season’s derby defeats and losing the title to City on goal difference still hurts. After winning the title in his first season at Old Trafford, he struggled to handle the contrasting emotions on that final day.

He said: “It affected me massively. We are not used to not winning anything and this year it does definitely drive us on.

“The manager was very disappointed, as we all were, and this year we’ve all gone out to try to make amends.”

While United were hammered 6-1 in the derby at Old Trafford, it was the 1-0 defeat at the Etihad three games before the end of the season that proved crucial. Vincent Kompany headed the winner — he was Smalling’s man.

Smalling said: “It was a case of marking him and he got away, I just need to make sure we go there and win.”

Smalling, who was speaking at the launch of the Far Cry 3 video game, is not getting ahead of himself, however.

Before the Etihad crunch, he aims to help United make sure their five-match winning run in the Premier League stretches so that, by the time they finish with City, it will be in double figures.

They face Norwich at Carrow Road today, QPR and West Ham at home and then Reading away.

The form their forwards are in, you would not bet against maximum points.

But Smalling knows it would help if they could tighten up a bit at the back and stop having to mount these dramatic comebacks — their 3-2 win at Aston Villa last week was the EIGHTH time they have come from behind to win this season.

He said: “It’s literally all just concentration.Before each game the manager is always saying, ‘Concentration, concentration’.We’ve gone behind in a lot of these games this season and it is something we need to address.

“But a lot of the time when we have gone behind — say against Villa and Braga when we were 2-0 down — once we got that first goal back, it wasn’t the case of thinking we could now get the draw. We always thought we could go all the way and get the win.”