Gather ‘round, ye barnacle-encrusted layabouts and grog-soaked gamblers! Adjust your eyepatches and steady your peg-legs, for the winds of the North West are howling a tune of impending carnage. The Great Manchester Derby is upon us, but this ain’t no mere skirmish for a chest of rotten oranges. No, me hearties, the scrolls are calling it a ‘Destruction Derby,’ and by the look of the horizon, the sea is about to turn a very violent shade of blue. The Blue Armada of City, led by that bald-headed tactical sorcerer Pep the Catalan, is weighing anchor with enough gold in their hold to buy the King’s own palace twice over. They’ve been terrorizing the shipping lanes for years, their cannons loaded with ‘Precision Passing’ and that blonde Viking behemoth, Haaland, who looks like he eats entire longships for breakfast.

On the other side of the bay, we have the Red Devils of United, though these days they look more like ‘Soggy Newts’ clinging to a piece of driftwood. Their captain, the Dutchman Ten Hag, is desperately trying to patch a hull that’s seen more leaks than a sieve in a monsoon. Once the terrors of the high seas under the Great Redbeard Ferguson, they now wander the charts like a ghost ship, haunted by the memories of trophies long since rusted. My quartermaster, ‘One-Ear’ Barnaby, spat his tobacco into the bilge when he saw the odds. ‘Captain,’ he croaked, ‘The Reds are heading into a maelstrom with a broken rudder and a crew that’s more interested in their Instagram scrolls than sharpening their cutlasses. If City catches them in open water, there won’t be enough timber left to build a birdhouse.’

This ain’t just about sport, ye lubbers; the consequences for the High Seas are dire! If the Blue Armada succeeds in this ‘Destruction,’ the sheer weight of their victory will tilt the very tectonic plates of the Atlantic. My sources in the Admiralty—mostly drunken lords who owe me silver—claim that a City victory will cause the price of blue rum to skyrocket, while the Red Sea might actually evaporate out of pure embarrassment. Lord Rashford of the Wing is said to be praying for a gale to blow the match off course, but the Blue Moon is high, and it don't show mercy to those with limp sails. Even the harbor masters at the FA are shaking in their buckled boots, fearing the total annihilation of the ‘Competitive Balance’—a mythical beast rarer than a sober sailor.

‘It’s a massacre in the making,’ muttered Old Blind Pete, the tavern’s resident prophet of doom. ‘I’ve seen the Blue Moon swallow the sun before, and it always ends with the Manchester docks smelling of scorched earth and shattered dreams. The Red Devils are bringing knives to a broadside cannon fight.’ Indeed, the talk in the Tortuga markets is that if United falls, the wreckage will clog the Manchester Ship Canal for a decade, forcing us to reroute our spice shipments through the treacherous waters of Liverpool—a fate worse than walking the plank! The Blue Armada doesn't just want the points; they want to scuttle the very idea that Manchester was ever a two-flag town.

So, batten down the hatches and hide your doubloons! Whether you fly the Sky Blue ensign or the Tattered Crimson, prepare for a storm that’ll leave the pitch looking like a graveyard of broken ambitions. Will the Red Devils find a hidden reef to ground the invaders, or will Pep’s leviathans send them screaming into Davy Jones’s Locker? One thing is certain: by the time the final whistle blows, there’ll be enough salt in the air to cure a thousand hams, and enough tears to float a galleon. To the masts, ye dogs! The Destruction is nigh!