Liverpool’s Champions League win has altered landscape of Manchester derby – it’s now a game both teams must win

City can win the title on Saturday - something they were happy to wait for until the Champions League defeat

It is expected to be another heated battle between the two rivals (PA)

It isn’t quite the full winner-takes-all of 2012, but it could end up with some echoes of 2007… or maybe even 2014.

That’s also the thing with Saturday’s Manchester derby, and how it goes beyond the here and now. Sure, in terms of meaning, it can’t compare with that match at the Etihad six years ago. That 1-0 Manchester City win was as close to a straight title play-off as you can hope to get with modern fixture concerns, since the winner would have the fate of the trophy in their own hands with just two games left. That was proven by Vincent Kompany raising that very trophy after rising highest for the winner against Manchester United.

The issue with this one is that City will still win the title regardless of the result, but the fact they can seal it by beating their biggest rivals makes it as big a derby as you could hope for, and there’s also the problem for Pep Guardiola that doing precisely that now has accumulated an even greater importance because of the matches it falls between.

Really, City now must win. That is because they must prevent the profound shellshock of the Liverpool defeat further gripping them, and also because they must now energise themselves for the return, to give the side the best possible chance of a comeback and a feat that would maybe trump this title win.

This is also a twist of the season. The Champions League now colours everything, maybe even any title celebrations, and potentially the very memory of the campaign.

City need to create a new great moment, and thereby create a new momentum. But, it also changes things for United, and especially their manager.

The prospect of this fixture must previously have been a nightmare, something to be endured. Even if they got a result so that they weren’t patsies to City’s procession, the league won because they were being subjected to defeat, the feeling would have been they were just delaying the party. They couldn’t even spoil it.

Now, they can maybe do more than that, and maybe help spoil some of the memories of City’s entire season given the potential effect on Tuesday’s return with Liverpool. Any diminishment of what City do given their expenditure would in turn reflect better on United’s more underwhelming campaign - and reflect better on Jose Mourinho.

Anyone who knows the Portuguese in any way, or even heard him speak in some of his more high-profile press conferences this season, can’t help but feel this would greatly motivate him.

It’s also impossible not to wonder whether, before Wednesday night’s result, the mischievous masochist in Mourinho even momentarily considered the possibility of putting out United’s modern equivalents of Dong Fangzhuo or Chris Eagles to really diminish the party. That was what the Portuguese himself had to face as Chelsea manager when roles were spun around a bit in 2006-07. United had actually clinched the title the previous weekend thanks to their own 1-0 win at the Etihad and Chelsea’s subsequent failure to beat Arsenal. Mourinho’s side then had to form a guard of honour for the team that usurped them as champions, only for Sir Alex Ferguson to fill the team with back-up players.

The competitor in Mourinho would never have allowed that here, but there is now an even greater motivation for really competing in this game.

There’s also the feeling that a different kind of approach could appeal to his sense of mischief, too, but one we’ve seen before on an even bigger occasion: Anfield, April 2014.

That epic 2-0 win didn’t lead to Mourinho winning one of the trophies of his own, but did deny Liverpool the Premier League trophy, and is for that very reason still one of the competition’s greatest moments. It is also one of Mourinho’s great moments, and partly for the very reason he didn’t win silverware. That only emphasised one of his other qualities, and the game was in fact the most extreme possible distillation of it: his capacity for defence, for destruction.

Chelsea sat as deep as possible, and did everything possible to frustrate and unnerve Liverpool, right down to the unleashing of time-wasting as a key part of their gameplan.

It might not have been pretty to watch, but there was a deliciousness in how much Mourinho relished it. Saturday may well see similar.

There is an argument that it should see similar to Wednesday, and that Mourinho should actually try and replicate what Jurgen Klopp did by properly going at Liverpool. The only issue with that is that it seems improbable that City will play any way as supinely as at Anfield again.

They will want to make a point, to get those three points required.

If they don’t do that, they have real problems, but it is surely why they will want to put on a proper show; to offer an extreme distillation of their own best side. The noise from the City training ground is that they are already determined to do that, and then use it to power what could yet be a unique comeback against Liverpool.

This is the situation they're in. A game to win the title against their arch rivals is actually about something even bigger.

Victory over United at home would be the perfect way for this club to win a title, after all. It’s just a fixture that happens to suddenly come at an imperfect time.

It could go a long way to setting the exact legacy of what has still been an excellent 2017-18.