EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart on why he considers the derby with Manchester United just another game with no room for emotion

• Manchester City travel to Old Trafford for the derby on Sunday
• City can go top of the table if they avoid defeat by Manchester United
• Joe Hart has spoken exclusively with Sportsmail ahead of the trip
• The England goalkeeper insists the derby is just another game 
• Hart: 'They are just another team that's trying to stop us from winning titles. That's about as far as it goes for me'

By Oliver Holt For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 16:30 EST, 24 October 2015 | Updated: 20:39 EST, 24 October 2015

Joe Hart is not a fully paid-up member of the goalkeepers' union. Goalkeepers are supposed to be crazy. They are supposed to be eccentric. They are supposed to be unpredictable. A little emotional vulnerability is often implied. That's not Hart. It doesn't even get close. The England No 1 is one of the least vulnerable people in football.

There is a kind of invincibility about him. Eleven Joe Harts would make a battalion, not a team. He doesn't really do doubt. He talks in straight lines. Ask a question that mentions somebody else's opinion and he bats that opinion away.

He neither wants to refute it nor endorse it. He is so sure of his own view that other opinions are largely irrelevant to him. Alan Shearer was a bit like that as a player, too. Unshakeable. It is strangely reassuring to be in the presence of such certainty. 

England goalkeeper Joe Hart has spoken exclusively to Sportsmail ahead of the Manchester derby on Sunday

Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart insists the derby with Manchester United is just another game to him

Hart's focus is intense and it is narrow. Questions that invite introspection get short shrift. 'It's pretty simple,' says the Manchester City keeper. 'I'm someone who wants to do well at their job. I am completely in what I am doing. I keep my focus on the stuff that matters to me and that is pretty much how I live my life.'

It is hard not be impressed by him. Sure, if you want soul-searching or hand-wringing, he is probably not your man. If you want dedication to a cause, though, if you want confidence, if you want relentless hard work, if you want clear thinking, if you want ambition, he probably is.

Hart is in a good place. City started the weekend on top of the table and the win over Sevilla on Wednesday night resuscitated their Champions League campaign. Raheem Sterling and Kevin De Bruyne have both been instant successes. In some matches, City have looked scarily good. The club are awash with optimism and confidence again. 'I'm where I want to be,' says Hart.

At 28, Hart is hitting his prime. He sits in a room next to reception at the City football academy, the stunning new training complex and sports city the club have built next to the Etihad Stadium, regenerating a swathe of Manchester.

He is still in his training kit. Flip flops have replaced his boots. He rubs his left arm a lot as he talks. He says he just got a whack on it. He smiles and says he wouldn't want to give the impression it was a nervous tic.

It is Thursday afternoon and he is starting to think about the game against Manchester United at Old Trafford. The Manchester derby. The most important date in the calendar for many of the fans on both sides. Even bigger this year because City are second, United are fourth and Manchester is king again. A game full of passion. A game that means everything. 

Hart shares a joke with Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini at the City football academy

Hart pictured ahead of training at the City football academy as he and his team-mates prepare for the derby

Hart going through his gloves before the training session ahead of their trip to Old Trafford

Hart believes there is no room for emotion as Manchester City look to be crowned champions this season

Hart shakes his head. Not for him. To get carried away with the emotion of the game would be a weakness, he says. The idea that he might hate United's players — even temporarily — is alien to him. He raises his eyebrows at that notion. This is business. This is a task to be executed ruthlessly and efficiently. This is an opponent to be put back in its box. It is not that he is unfamiliar with local rivalry. It is just that he sees it as a pointless distraction.

'I don't think much about United,' says Hart. 'The same as I don't think much about West Ham. They become my sole focus when they are our next opponents. But after that, they are just another team that's trying to stop us from winning titles. That's about as far as it goes for me.

'It was a motivation to get to where United were when they were No 1. But it was the same motivation that I had towards Arsenal or Chelsea. It wasn't a personal vendetta. Maybe that's because I wasn't born in Manchester.

'But to do well, and to grow as we are growing, I don't think anything can be personal. It has to be business. Until last night, I was focusing on Sevilla. Now I am focusing on Manchester United. Yes, it's an important game. It's important for the table. If we win, that puts us five points clear of a very strong team. It probably gives us a very good start to the season, especially after the result against Sevilla.

'But there's not too much importance to it because the table can chop and change all the time. The next game for us is always the most important. The next game at the Etihad, against Crystal Palace, will be huge for us when it comes around next week.  

Hart pictured celebrating Manchester City's late win over Sevilla in the Champions League on Wednesday

Hart celebrates with Jesus Navas following their Group D win over Sevilla at the Etihad Stadium

Manchester City left it late to beat the visitors from Spain but secured the win in Europe's elite competition

'I genuinely have no feeling about whether United are doing well or not. They are their own club. They are a special club. All my focus is on what we do. Wherever they are in the table, good for them. My sole aim is to keep us at No 1. Everyone else is free to do what they want to do in the league but my focus is that we work harder and we do better.'

Hart listens to stories about how, in the Seventies and Eighties, players from City and United, and Liverpool and Everton, were friends and would socialise together but, come the derby games, would admit to being so overcome by the intensity of the occasion that they wanted to hurt each other.

This, too, is foreign to him. In the modern era, he says, allowing oneself to be lost in the passion of the game would probably end up as a costly indulgence. Hart values control more. Loss of control is anathema to him. He has been at the top for a while now. Maybe that is why he talks with the wisdom of a veteran.

'I don't really know football from the Seventies and Eighties,' he says. 'It's all myths and legends to me. It is easier to talk about those times now because there are no repercussions. Right now, we live in the reality that if you commit two half-bad fouls then you're gone and your team could lose.

'I will never go into a game aggressive because I will cost my team the victory if I am reckless. If I have got a personal vendetta with someone or I don't like the way someone has done something to me in the game, I am just going to have to get over it. That's how I play and how I'll always play. I have got more responsibility to Man City than I have to trying to impress anyone by looking aggressive. 

Hart believes Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea, who he faces on Sunday, is among the world's best

Hart spoke exclusively to Sportsmail ahead of Manchester City's testing trip to Old Trafford on Sunday

'I don't socialise with any of the United players. I've got people I get on with when I'm away with England but, you know, we've all got busy lives. I've got friends at Man City that I spend a lot of time with football-wise but the way modern football is with Europe and stuff like that, you go home and you spend time with your own people. If you bump into each other, it's nice but that's about as far as it goes.'

It is not that Hart is an automaton. Far from it. In fact, there is a clip on YouTube that went viral precisely because it shows Hart exuding the kind of wild-eyed passion fans can relate to as he desperately tried to recover the ball from a ballboy in the closing stages of England's defeat by Italy at last year's World Cup.

Hart runs behind the goal at the Arena da Amazonia in Manaus and yells: 'Give me the ****ing ball' to the kid, who is out of shot. Hart doesn't exactly wince at the memory but it is obvious it is not a clip of which he is particularly fond.

He does not mention Peter Schmeichel but it is also clear he does not like the idea that he might be seen as the kind of keeper who screams abuse at his defenders for 90 minutes every match. When he shouts on the pitch, he says, it is only so he can make himself heard above the din of battle.

'Look,' he says of the YouTube clip, 'we were 2-1 down against Italy in the World Cup. There were five minutes of added time and we had already had about three-and-a-half minutes. Maybe it wasn't great for me to swear but I honestly didn't know it had happened. I just wanted the ball. The ballboys are not professionals. I don't hold it against them. Maybe the kid was lost in the moment of the World Cup and I needed the ball. He was holding on to it. If the ball had been on the floor, I would have run over and picked it up but I can't rugby tackle a kid. I just wanted to inject some urgency and try and get back in the game. 

Hart insists goalkeepers have to be vocal and that he regularly shouts instructions at his team-mates

Hart, pictured celebrating with captain Vincent Kompany, feels he has a good relationship with his defenders

Hart will try to stop new Manchester United signing Anthony Martial from continuing his fine goalscoring form

'You have to be vocal as a goalkeeper. It makes your job a lot harder if you are a mouse. I see the whole pitch. I have always told my players that no matter how loud I am shouting, I am not telling you off. I would never shout at someone and tell them they are wrong. I'm just trying to give information as best I can to make people aware of something that maybe they are not seeing.

'I have a great relationship with my defenders and I have always tried to build that early. Other people have gone down the line of shouting at people to tell them off. That's not my job. I see my job as to help in any way I can. Sometimes, I've got to scream but that's because it's a noisy crowd.'

Hart has no time for noise. He is not on Twitter. It's not that he is put off by the idea of getting abuse, he says. It is just that he doesn't really see the point. 'I just like football,' he says.

He does have time for other goalkeepers. He likes to study them. He watched Arsenal's victory over Bayern Munich last week and purred over the performances of Petr Cech and Manuel Neuer, Neuer's mistake for Arsenal's first goal notwithstanding.

He thinks for a second about his top three goalkeepers in the world. He discounts Thibaut Courtois because he is injured and names David de Gea, who will be his opposite number on Sunday, Gianluigi Buffon and Neuer, who made an astonishing one-handed save from Theo Walcott at The Emirates. 

'Neuer does amazing things,' says Hart. 'People love the sweeper-keeper thing but he is genuinely a very good goalkeeper. The Walcott save — I don't even think the Bayern players would have high-fived him for that. They just expect it from him.

Arsenal attacker Theo Walcott goes for goal during the Champions League clash against Bayern Munich

Walcott was about to wheel away in celebration when his header was superbly stopped by Manuel Neuer

 Walcott started to run away celebrating but Bayern Munich goalkeeper Neuer somehow managed to deny him

Bayern Munich goalkeeper Neuer (pictured after the game on Tuesday) makes Hart's top three in the world

Gianluigi Buffon, the Juventus legend, is another goalkeeper who Manchester City's Hart highly rates 

Hart will go up against Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea on Sunday and has hailed the Spaniard

'The more in-depth stuff that I look at with Neuer isn't stuff like the save from Walcott. That's an instinct save. The thing that I work harder on than anything in terms of studying the game is positional play, communication, stuff that is not necessarily going to be organised. The save that he made, that's the nice bit, the bit on top that top goalkeepers just have.

'Neuer just has that but I'm sure he works really hard on being in the right position at the right time, seeing a pass, working out what a player's going to do. That's where the hard work comes in, knowing where you want to be. The save is the cherry on top.'

Hart knows he may have to be at his best on Sunday afternoon. He talks about Wayne Rooney in glowing terms. He has seen what Anthony Martial can do. He knows United hope they can challenge for the title this season. But City will take some stopping. The club, in their new guise as a superpower of the game, are reaching towards a new maturity. They are starting to feel settled. They are starting to feel comfortable in their skin again.

'It has to be a goal for us to dominate domestic football now,' says Hart. 'With our resources, the set-up here, wages, all that combined, everything has been put there for us to be a very, very strong force in all parts of the game. It's down to us now. It's our responsibility to fulfil that'The sky's the limit for us. My thought process isn't about where people say we should be. I respect people have opinions but I don't have to take them on board. I know what we can do and where we can go. My ambition is to take us to those places. I think we are getting there. I know. I'm in it.'

Hart considers De Gea, Buffon and Neuer to currently be the three best goalkeepers in the world

Manchester City can move top of the Barclays Premier League if they avoid defeat in the derby on Sunday

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