Blue vs. Red. Pride vs. Pedigree. Rooney vs. Hart. Sterling vs. Martial. Noel Gallagher vs. Chevrolet. The Manchester Derby. 

Sunday is derby day in Manchester, England and the stakes are huge. Manchester City sits atop the English Premier League with Manchester United two points behind and looking to overtake their neighbors with a win on their home grounds as the clubs meet for the 170th time. 

Separated by a three-mile stretch on the A57 road, a 15 minute drive southwest will take you from the Etihad Stadium to Old Trafford, the site of this Sunday’s Manchester derby between Manchester United and Manchester City.

A top of the table clash between United and City, rarely seen throughout the course of the Manchester derby’s illustrious history, has heightened the drama beyond its normal magnitude. This is a fixture that will go a long way towards deciding who will be crowned Premier League champion come May.

You're abroad: a different language, a new culture and altogether different customs. You've been gathering up courage, repeating the appropriate local phrase over and over again in your head. 

This is what traveling is all about. You make eye contact with the waiter and let that silver tongue loose. You're a cosmopolitan now. 

Suddenly, the momentary pride you feel is replaced with a sinking sense of horror as the curveball arrives. Your prepared statement is returned back to you in the form of some unintelligible question. 

I like to imagine somewhere in Merseyside this week, Brendan Rodgers and Jurgen Klopp met at Liverpool Lime Street, at the train station, and had a cup of coffee. In my head the conversation was light and mostly not about soccer. Something like this:

Klopp laughs a shushed laugh at one of Rodgers’s stories about Jose Mourinho from his time at Chelsea, and then there’s a natural pause in the smooth, flowing conversation. This is uncomfortable for both men.

Rodgers: “This is a really good club, you know.”

It was a rocky three-year-long marriage, but Liverpool finally parted ways with Brendan Rodgers. Now, the Reds are keen on hiring a high profile manager to lead the club (most notably former Borussia Dortmund man Jurgen Klopp), and the immediate start of the search has seen Liverpool contact Klopp and Carlo Ancelotti. 

Former Liverpool favorite John Aldridge would like to see the Italian manager commanding the club.

It seems that hat tricks are already a piece of cake in modern soccer. Now the fashion is to score five goals within a few minutes of a match, as Sergio Aguero did for Manchester City this weekend.

On September 22, Robert Lewandowski did it in nine minutes in the Bundesliga, and now Aguero has emulated Bayern Munich’s forward in a 6-1 win over Newcastle in the Premier League.

If you have ever seen someone in the middle of a crisis, Jose Mourinho’s post-game interview after his Chelsea side lost 3-1 to Southampton will at be once inspirational, unbelievable, and familiar.

Chelsea were the 14/15 Premier League Champions. Now they are sitting just four places above dead last. His team has no identity; it is in full crisis mode, and so is Jose Mourinho. Losing to Southampton made that crisis unignorable, and forced Jose Mourinho to finally address it after the game. 

Liverpool FC have announced they have fired Brendan Rodgers. The sacking is effective immediately following the club's lackluster 1-1 draw with Everton. The "Rodgers Out" cries sounded far and wide on Twitter.

Sergio Aguero is a frustrating striker for Manchester City fans. He’s ridiculously good when he’s on form, but he just isn’t on form all that often. Injuries have often been to blame, but that doesn’t make him any less inconsistent.

Chalk this story up to the gossip column here at the18.com. But fresh off scoring his first goal for Manchester United in the Premier League, Memphis Depay has been spotted canoodling and shopping around Manchester with singer Chris Brown’s ex-girlfriend, Karrueche Tran.

According to onlookers, the pair attended the same night spots in Manchester on Saturday night, as they were both seen outside Suburbia nightclub and Club LIV. Then, following a night of Saturday partying the pair indulged in a day of shopping and strolling Monday afternoon.