Evening all, and welcome to Sheffield United v Manchester City!

Nice from United, Sharp running Laporte and making it onto a rather fortuitous flick from McBurnie, crossing for Fleck ... but Fernandinho does well to clear.

Nice from United, McBurnie holding up and holding off Fernandino before laying back for Sharp, on the burst; Fernandinho immediately trips him, performing his party piece of making a yellow-card challenge without receiving a yellow card.

If I was Chris Wilder - for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not - I'd get McBurnie on Laporte and try and put the ball in behind as soon and as often as possible.

Fernandinho isn't playing in a line with City's two other centre-backs when his team have possession.

McBurnie overruns the ball in centrefield and seeks to resolve his error by knocking it back, in fact putting Jesus in, only he slips.

It does indeed look like City ate playing a back three, though maybe they'll change after a few minutes - something Guardiola does from time to time.

Norwood launches it long immediately.

Away we go!

Anyway, here come the teams! Can United get themselves into Europe?

It's weird to think that City may well put up the second-worst title defence of the Premier League era, and still finish second. Leeds came 17th, 33 points off the top, in 1992-93, but they won the old Football League; Chelsea were 30 points away in 2017-18.

Just to be sure we all grasp the import of what's about to go down, there are those flamethrower things on the pitch. Incredible scenes.

Chris Wilder is an extremely impressive individual. He says that his team played an "extremely high level" in that previous meeting, and doesn't want his side to camp on the edge of their own box, but to pose City problems. He says he's made the changes to "freshen it up"

Last time these teams met:

That bonce is phenomenally shiny.

It's good to see Oli McBurnie has recovered from enjoying himself watching Swansea. I'm relieved the game has somehow weathered the storm.

More clean sheets than David de Gea so far this season.

As for City, Aymeric Laporte returns after five months out. Had he been available all season we might have ourselves a title race, but the truth is that City should have bought him a partner in any case, but instead Pep Guardiola busted his cash on another technical midfielder. The way their line-up is listed suggests that City are going to match up United's 3-5-2 - which must be amusing for Fernandinho, who's been waiting on Laporte to get back into midfield. I sort of get that - if two sides play the same way, you'd expect the better one to win - except City aren't drilled in this formation, and you'd expect them to win doing their own thing as well.

When doing the Man United-Wolves replay last week, I whinged about how Wolves are my least favourite Premier League team to watch, so to rebalance the cosmos I shall note how much I enjoy watching Sheffield United, who play with energy, enterprise and edge. I'm looking forward to seeing what they make of this game.

As per the tweet, Fantasy League hero John Lundstram drops out, replaced by Everton anti-hero, Mo Besic, while Billy Sharp is in for Lys Mousset.