Winger has jumped to the top of the pecking order of wide men since Portuguese took the reins at Old Trafford

Most of the noise around those in red at the Etihad Stadium last Sunday related to the dropping of two wingers until Amad Diallo intercepted Matheus Nunes’s woeful back-pass and won a penalty before scoring a last-minute winner. The Ivorian was Manchester United’s main threat in a mediocre derby as his flourishing under Ruben Amorim continued, while others drifted into the shadows.

As Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho endured a watching brief after being stood down, putting them below Antony in the pecking order, Diallo shone. The new head coach is constantly tinkering and rotating personnel as he searches for the best players for individual roles but Diallo is making himself almost undroppable and will get another start against Bournemouth on Sunday as he aims to add to his two league goals and six assists this season.

• Player was taken off during victory at Manchester City
• Amorim plans to teach Mount more about team play

Mason Mount will be out for “a long time” with the muscle injury sustained in Manchester United’s win against Manchester City, with Ruben Amorim stating the recovery time will be used to teach the England international more about team play.

Mount was forced off after 14 minutes of Sunday’s 2-1 derby victory at the Etihad Stadium. This continued his bad luck since signing in summer 2023, being restricted to 32 appearances owing to injuries. Amorim was asked how long the 25-year-old will be unavailable.

Bournemouth look to repeat Old Trafford heroics, Saints must get ugly and it’s Füllkrug time for West Ham

Approaching the halfway point, it is hard to gauge where Aston Villa are at. Regardless of Manchester City’s extended wobble, a result at home to Pep Guardiola’s side will go a long way to providing an indication. It was always going to be a big ask for Villa to better or even equal last season’s achievements but, with automatic qualification to the Champions League last 16 a distinct possibility and a top-four finish within reach, it has been another solid, if imperfect, start. Only once this season have Villa recorded victory after a European night, in September after winning at Young Boys. This time last season Villa were third in the division, two points off the summit, on 35 points. They may be 10 points worse off now but, despite defeat at Nottingham Forest last time out, they remain in a good spot. Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Manchester City, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Brentford v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm

Ipswich v Newcastle, Saturday 3pm

West Ham v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Crystal Palace v Arsenal, Saturday 5.30pm

• ‘Massive credit’ after 4-3 win over Manchester United
• Amorim defends decision to leave out Rashford again

Ange Postecoglou described the first semi-final of his Tottenham Hotspur career as “progress” for his injury-ravaged side, even if they were made to sweat by Manchester United in a hectic 4-3 victory. “It’s one thing me praising them,” he said. “But they need the reward of winning, and how it makes them feel, so they can go to the well again.”

Spurs will play Liverpool over two legs in the last four of the Carabao Cup, with the first leg in north London taking place in the first week of January and the second at Anfield in the first week of February. The winner will face Arsenal or Newcastle in the final at Wembley, and Postecoglou will hope that his injury worries have eased by the time those fixtures come around.

Like a song that changes time signature for the hell of it, like a friend that inexplicably blanks you, like a match report that noodles away for ages instead of just telling you what happened, Tottenham Hotspur remain medically incapable of doing things the simple way. This is becoming a kind of mania, a disorder, a cry for help. What is this? Who are you really? And, you know, can you not?

For all this, Ange Postecoglou’s side are Carabao Cup semi-finalists, the latest plot twist in a season in which nobody can really agree whether things are going well or not. Great football. But also some terrible football. But also, two games from a trophy. But also, 10th in the Premier League. But also two goals for the brilliant Dominic Solanke. But also two goals basically given away by Fraser Forster.

• League Cup updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off
• Football Daily: Christmas awards | And mail John

Last time out for these two:

The pre-match press conferences are here.

• Investment will not be used to bolster current squad
• Club now part of wider sporting group that Ineos owns

Sir Jim Ratcliffe has increased his stake in Manchester United after injecting a further £79.3m ($100m) promised when he bought his minority stake last year.

The British billionaire now owns 28.94% of the club, up from 27.7%. The latest investment is set to help fund improvements off the pitch rather than help bolster Ruben Amorim’s squad during January’s transfer window. When Ratcliffe bought into United a year ago, the deal included a guarantee that he would put £238m ($300m) into infrastructure and this is the final instalment of those payments, which the US Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed was paid on Wednesday.

• Rashford said in interview he could seek ‘new challenge’
• Forward likely to miss Carabao Cup trip to Tottenham

Ruben Amorim has said when he was a player he would have spoken to his manager about being dropped rather than react in the media, as Marcus Rashford has done. Manchester United’s head coach is undecided about how to deal with the forward, though he is believed to have left him out of the squad for Thursday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final at Tottenham.

Rashford said in an interview with the journalist Henry Winter on Tuesday that he was “ready for a new challenge”. This came after the 27-year-old, who has struggled for form over the past two seasons, had been dropped for United’s 2-1 win against Manchester City on Sunday.

• ‘We have an election every week and get voted in or out’
• Spurs prepare to face Manchester United in Carabao Cup

A Premier League manager has a tougher job than the prime minister, according to Ange Postecoglou. The Tottenham manager was reflecting on the departure of top-flight peers Gary O’Neil and Russell Martin while looking ahead to a meeting with the new Manchester United manager, Ruben Amorim, in the Carabao Cup on Thursday.

“This job is the hardest job now in any walk of life,” declared Postecoglou. “You can say politics but this is harder than any job. The tenure and longevity of this role means very few are going to come out of it without any scars. How many times does [Keir Starmer] have an election? I have one every weekend. We have an election every weekend and either get voted in or out.”

Ruben Amorim responded to questions after Marcus Rashford said he was 'ready for a new challenge', maintaining that Manchester United are better with the forward. Rashford's comments in an interview with the journalist Henry Winter came following reports that the club are ready to sell the 27-year-old. Rashford had been dropped for United’s 2-1 derby win at Manchester City on Sunday, having struggled for form over the past two seasons. United’s head coach insists he wants Rashford to stay however, saying: 'This kind of club needs big talent and he’s a big talent, so he just needs to perform at the highest level and that is my focus. I just want to help Marcus.'

• Amorim urges Rashford to stay at Manchester United and prove himself

• Rashford needs a fresh start but reviving his career will not be easy

The forward’s disillusionment with Manchester United is understandable, but he faces a tricky task to fix his form

It was two years ago on Wednesday that Argentina won the World Cup. England had gone out to France in the quarter-finals and, beyond the usual kneejerk attacks on Gareth Southgate, there was a sense of general optimism. They had lost in a 50-50 game, beaten in the marginal details, and the squad looked young and fresh. When had we last seen an England attack so bristling with talent as a front three of Bukayo Saka, Harry Kane and Phil Foden, with Raheem Sterling, Jack Grealish and Marcus Rashford lined up on the bench to replace them?

How quickly the world of football changes. Grealish is an intermittent presence at a glitching Manchester City. Sterling, chewed up by the Great Disruption at Chelsea, has vanished on his loan at Arsenal. But nobody perhaps has suffered a more striking decline than Rashford. He’d scored off the bench against Iran and got two against Wales on his only World Cup start in Qatar. He returned from the tournament in the form of his life. He got eight goals in his next seven appearances. In total that season, he scored 30 goals for Manchester United.

He’d campaigned successfully to secure free meals for disadvantaged children during school holidays, which appeared to speak not only of a social conscience but unusual maturity. He seemed to have added a yard of pace and a greater directness to his game, and had a pleasing knack of putting the ball in the net. By the end of that season, he was 25 and seemingly entering his peak.

• Rashford claims he is ‘ready for a new challenge’
• Amorim insists he wants forward to remain at club

Ruben Amorim has insisted Marcus Rashford is not close to leaving Manchester United and urged the forward to embrace the “biggest challenge” of proving himself at his boyhood club.

Rashford stated in an interview with the journalist Henry Winter on Tuesday that he was “ready for a new challenge”. This came after the 27-year-old had been dropped for United’s 2-1 win Manchester City on Sunday and having struggled for form over the past two seasons.

• ‘I’m ready for a new challenge,’ says England forward
• Rashford out of squad and could leave in January

Marcus Rashford has opened the door to a Manchester United exit by declaring he is “ready for a new challenge and the next steps” away from Old Trafford.

The England forward was axed from United’s squad for the 2-1 derby win at Manchester City on Sunday, with the head coach Ruben Amorim admitting he was unhappy with what he had seen from the England striker on and off the pitch.

This story will be updated

Billionaire is taking a ruthless approach at a club which, under the Glazers, became a byword for complacency

In Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s push to revolutionise Manchester United from relic to ruthless winning machine he possesses the vital element missing from the Glazers’ listless ownership: a searing will to do so.

As the controller of football policy and the largest minority shareholder, Ratcliffe has the executive levers to engineer change. The six Glazer siblings, too, have these. Yet in the decade between Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in May 2013 and Ratcliffe’s advent last Christmas Eve, there was scant intent from the majority shareholders to ensure United were best in class.

Suddenly, fascinatingly, every game seems fraught with possibility, even if that has meant mostly pain for the struggling champions, Manchester City

• Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Sometimes the only explanation that makes sense is that football is governed not by the laws of physics, by data and xG and logic, but that it is in fact a malevolent deity, capricious and mischievous and that sometimes it turns on you and there’s really not much that can be done.

The Manchester derby had been a largely dreadful game between two tentative sides, lacking confidence and conviction, poking and prodding and giving very little indication they’ve been the two most successful clubs over the history of the Premier League. But City had had all three of the shots on target in the first half and, in that sense, were worth the lead given them when Joško Gvardiol headed in Kevin De Bruyne’s deflected cross, a goal that would have seemed freakish had it not been the eighth United have conceded from a corner this season, and the fourth under Ruben Amorim.

Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim explained Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho's surprise omission from his squad for their match against Manchester City was not for disciplinary reasons but was intended to push them. Amorim said 'it's important the performance in training, the performance in-game, the way you dress, the way you eat, the way you engage with teammates, the way you push your teammates' and added that the team proved through their victory again City that they 'can leave anyone outside the squad and manage to win'.

• Manchester United view sidelining Marcus Rashford as key to cultural reboot

• Club ready to cut losses but see easier way back for Garnacho
• Ashworth exit part of willingness to take short-term pain

Marcus Rashford has been marginalised and put up for sale by Manchester United as part of a cultural reboot deemed necessary to transform the club after standards were allowed to decline for more than a decade.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is intent there can be no passengers and is ready to cut his losses on Rashford if there are suitors in January. A willingness to take short-term pain in pursuit of long-term gain was also behind Dan Ashworth’s exit as sporting director after five months when United had paid £5m to bring him from Newcastle.

• Defender’s deal expires in summer with one-year option
• Maguire dedicates derby win to fans after ‘difficult’ start

Harry Maguire is discussing a new contract with Manchester United that would commit him to at least a seventh and eighth season at the club.

The 31-year-old’s terms expire in June, with United holding an option for a further 12 months. If the centre-back agrees a new deal it would represent a remarkable turnaround after he lost the captaincy when Erik ten Hag was the manager and he nearly joined West Ham in summer 2023.

Nottingham Forest are dreaming of Europe while Ismaïla Sarr is a reason for Crystal Palace fans to be cheerful

Manchester United’s selection was something of a surprise, with Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho left out of the squad completely and Ruben Amorim further raising eyebrows by saying the decision had been made after analysing “everything – training, performance, engagement with teammates”. It was only something of a surprise, however, because the XI was posted on Facebook by Samuel Luckhurst of the Manchester Evening News at 10.23pm on Saturday night, a little over 18 hours before kick-off. “Interesting an XI has already leaked this evening,” he wrote. “Teams have leaked out of United for years but the current regularity, brazen manner of it and apparently public identity of the source make it more of an issue.” Amorim’s twin tasks are to create a successful team and a disciplined club where nobody threatening the collective to promote their individual agendas. Despite this welcome result, he has a lot to do on both fronts. Simon Burnton

Match report: Manchester City 1-2 Manchester United

Guardiola feels he is ‘not good enough’ after City’s late defeat by United

Match report: Liverpool 2-2 Fulham

Match report: Arsenal 0-0 Everton

Match report: Wolves 1-2 Ipswich

Amad Diallo’s intervention gave much-needed life to the utter deathliness of the game that preceded it

It was deeply fitting Amad Diallo should decide this Manchester derby, mainly because for long periods he seemed to be the only person on the pitch not playing under heavy sedation.

Footballers are often said to have stood out in a game. Diallo stood out here mainly because he actually seemed to like playing football. In the event this expressed itself in four extraordinary minutes during which Diallo played a lone hand in turning 1-0 down into a 2-1 win. Even before that there were long periods during which the slight, speedy, jarringly urgent figure on the right side of Manchester United’s attack appeared to be the only person on the pitch with any kind of hope that life can still go on, like the lone survivor in a George Romero movie, out there haring around a shopping centre dodging zombies.