Plenty of Manchester City players will look out for the dates of the Manchester United games when the fixture list drops.

Others may look for returns to previous clubs, such as Elliot Anderson at Nottingham Forest or - more acrimniously - Enzo Fernandez at Chelsea .

For Matheus Nunes, it is Sunderland - the team of his stepdad that gives him a chance to wind him up .

"When I have an argument with my father, I can go to the game and p*** him off," he said in summer.

Having a family of Mackems that are all season ticket holders at the Stadium of Light is not what you would expect of Brazilian-born Portugal international Nunes, but then very little about his life and career has been orthodox.

Moving from midfield to right-back must seem tame for somebody who had to hide in his house aged six when thieves with guns stormed into it looking to escape capture from the police.

Food and money were scarce in a "very rough" upbringing before his family moved to Portugal when he was 13 and things began to improve.

Still, as much as he enjoyed football it wasn't the academies of Benfica or Porto where Nunes cut his teeth.

He spent time working in a bakery at the end of his teenage years as he struggled to cope with a number of unsuccessful trials at clubs all over Europe.

It was only when he was 20 that a move to Estoril came, and after they played Sporting in a club game he was snapped up by the Lisbon giants.

Pep Guardiola called him one of the best players in the world after a Champions League game in 2022, and soon after that he became a record signing for Wolves.

He was on a list of City midfield targets in 2023 but well down it, only for complications to arise with everyone above him.

A standout performance at Old Trafford early in that season impressed staff and members of the Treble squad, and City pounced - although it took Nunes going on strike at Wolves to force a move and he has been viciously booed every time he has been back at Molineux.

More trouble was afoot though, with Guardiola quickly deciding that, despite his words a few years earlier, Nunes couldn't cut it in the City midfield.

He was scarcely used in his first season, and in his second year he started at left wing and then moved back to full-back; immediately came one of his lowest moments when he made....