If Manchester United are to earn derby bragging rights at the Etihad tonight then it would seem highly likely that Marcus Rashford will play a crucial role.
The forward is in the form of his life at the moment and given the patched-up look of City's defence and the fact Pep Guardiola's side haven't kept a clean sheet in eight games, United will be backing their own front three to create a few problems of their own.
While Anthony Martial has been a key component in that side this season, it's Rashford who has developed into the leader of the line recently, as his double in the absence of Martial to down Tottenham on Wednesday night proved.
That took the 22-year-old's current run to 12 goals in 13 games for club and country. In only three of those fixtures has he failed to find the back of the net, one of which - at Partizan Belgrade - he only played half an hour, while he had the opportunities to score against Aston Villa last weekend.
But hot streaks such as this one are nothing new to Rashford. Last season he had a run of seven goals in 10 games, the season before he netted six in seven, the campaign before that four in six.
The problem has been that those goalscoring bursts have ended suddenly and have usually been followed by periods of drought and a dip in confidence.
When his streak in front of goal ended last season Rashford scored just five in his next 21 games for United and England. At the start of this season he scored three times in his first 13 games, two of which were penalties. But then he scored for England against Bulgaria and he's barely stopped finding the back of the net since.
But the challenge for Rashford is to make sure that this form in front of goal doesn't stop. He looked unplayable when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took over a year ago, but soon lost his mojo and the goals dried up. United's best forwards of the part and the Premier League's greatest goalscorers avoided such slumps.
It's the life of a forward that at some point you will have a spell without a goal, but for Rashford so far they've been too regular and too long. His own goal scoring record proves that. He scored 11 in 53 games for United in 2016/17, 13 in 52 a year, 13 in 47 last season. This term he has 12 in 20 for United and is only two strikes away from his best ever return in a single season.
Rashford has age on his side to mature into a consistent goal getter. If he achieves that he can become a United great and Solskjaer is confident this latest burst of brilliant goal scoring is proof that that's now happening.
"He is doing that at the moment," Solskjaer said when asked whether the challenge for Rashford was to match Van Nistelrooy's consistent goalscoring. "And how he didn't get the goal against Villa is beyond me.
"He's consistently now scoring, what? Thirteen in the last 14 or whatever, but it's not like one in four and two or three without, it's not just in spurts.
"But he's consistently getting chances and into better positions. And on Wednesday night he was unbelievable and we hope to see that again."
Rashford's Expected Goals metric shows how he can blow hot and cold so drastically. In nine of his last 11 starts he's returned a figure of 0.62 or above, having managed those numbers in just four of his first 10 starts of the season.
The double against Tottenham took Rashford to 57 goals in 190 appearances for United. He knows he'll have to finish his career with a better ratio than one goal every 3.33 games, but his current form in front of goal is already improving that. He'll be backing himself to keep it going in the right direction at the Etihad.