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The spotlight will be on the two managers this weekend as Manchester City and Manchester United do battle at the Etihad.
There could be a couple of awkward moments in the Etihad directors' box this weekend. Ruben Amorim's closest relationship is with the man now Manchester City director of football, while Pep Guardiola is likely to save his warmest greeting for the man he replaced, who returns this weekend.
That's not to say that Amorim doesn't have a strong relationship with his Manchester United director of football, Jason Wilcox, or that Guardiola isn't striking up a similar rapport with Viana as he had with Txiki Begiristain, who will be a guest of the club after ending his 13-year stay this summer.
But it does strike at the interesting dynamics and subplots that have built up around this rivalry over the previous 12 months, in which time it feels like an awful lot has happened.
In fact, it's been about 11 months since things started to change. That's when City confirmed the appointment of Viana as Begiristain's successor, and when stories started emerging in Portugal that Viana had identified Amorim as Guardiola's replacement.
At that point, Guardiola had yet to sign the new contract that he would pen in November, ensuring his stay at the Etihad would go beyond the end of last season and into a 10th and 11th campaign. By then, Amorim was a name that had been crossed off the list of potential replacements anyway.
When Guardiola took his City side to Lisbon to face Sporting at the start of November, it was already clear Amorim was going to join him in Manchester rather than replacing him. When the Portuguese team won that Champions League fixture 4-1, United fans were cock-a-hoop.
But here we are, less than a year later and Amorim has one of the worst records of any new manager in Premier League history. The late, late 3-2 win against Burnley before the international break was just his eighth win in 30 Premier League fixtures.
His intransigence over a system that doesn't suit United - and wouldn't have suited City - doesn't lead to any regret at the Etihad, whatever Viana may feel privately about a head coach he has a strong relationship with.
The way Amorim's reputation has been torched at Old Trafford, however, is a reminder of how difficult picking a head coach is. When his Sporting team were ripping City apart last November, he looked like one of the best managers of his generation. Now he is being mocked by Grimsby.
So even if there is a degree of schadenfreude at City over a head coach who could feasibly have ended up at the club, the daunting prospect of having to replace Guardiola still hangs over the place.
That is undoubtedly going to be Viana's biggest challenge, and ultimately, it is what he is judged on. The 42-year-old needs to be prepared for every eventuality. As it stands, Guardiola is expected to depart in 2027 when his contract expires, but it would be negligent not to have a plan in place for if he decides to go this year, especially if results don't pick up.
Viana and Amorim had a tight bond at Sporting and brought success back to the club together, but the latter's experience at United clearly rules him out, even if he has walked away or been sacked by then. Instead, Viana will have to look elsewhere.
Amorim might well find himself serenaded by City fans this weekend, who have adopted and reworked the chant United fans sing about their head coach, to the tune of Bonnie Tyler's It's A Heartache. But he was the flavour of the month a year ago, and a coach that City's director of football would no doubt have loved to bring to the Etihad.
Maybe it would have worked out differently for him if that had happened, but his struggles do sharpen the mind when it comes to the decision no City fan wants to contemplate just yet.
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