Another derby, another week of endless anxiety, tension and rivalry filled talks. Though Sunday's upcoming games between arch rivals Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko in Kumasi in the LG Top 4 has not generated as much buzz as it used to, there is everything to suggest this would be another thrilling game.

Both sides are on six points in the LG Top 4 and victory on Sunday would give either side considerable advantage in the race for the pre-season trophy and the price money at stake. And as always, the weeks leading up to the game has seen both sides do lots of talking, with accusations and counter accusations flying around.

Kotoko coach Abdul Razak declared after his side's 1-0 win over Liberty Professionals that he would guide Kotoko to repeat his thrashing of Hearts while he was coach of Malian side Stade Malien in the African champions league.

Razak also added his voice to a long standing debate about the quality of players at both sides. With six straight league titles in the bag and with players of the caliber of Charles Taylor, Bernard Don Bortey, Hearts are generally thought of as the side with the more quality players.

That however does not hold true as far as Razak is concerned. "Those players were there when I led Stade to eliminate Hearts. I don't think the quality of players at Hearts is any better than those at Kotoko. It's just that a few things have gone wrong in the past. Hopefully, we have corrected that".

Razak's quality debate loses bite when measured against the trend of results in games between the two sides in the last few years. There was a 4-0 white wash and just last season an expertly executed 3-0 thrashing that threw Kotoko's league title ambitions completely overboard.

Then Kotoko coach Ian Porterfield made an observation after that defeat that would do Razak a world of good if he keeps that in mind during his pre-match technical talk. "The Hearts of Oak players are simply fantastic. They beat us for pace and were lightening quick every time they got down the flanks".

It was the last meeting between the two sides but there is every possibility that unless Kotoko clip Hearts' wings, they would be in for trouble again.

Hearts still have Don Bortey who created and scored one goal in the last win. Charles Taylor is back in town after trials in Switzerland. The bad news for Kotoko is that both players have lost none of the breadth taking skills and pace which were effectively the killer weapons that won Porterfield's admiration.

But given that Razak has done it before, discounting his claims that his side can do better this time around would be ignoring Kotoko's own fierce fighting spirit, quality and brilliance of their coach. Razak's Stade dumped Hearts out of the first round of the champions league primarily because they managed to keep Taylor and Bortey at bay.

In the two times that Kotoko have managed to win against Hearts in the last four years, they've done that by simply preventing the deadly duo of Hearts from playing.

Clearly, this has all the trappings of a thriller but Hearts' Emmanuel Osei Kuffour is in no doubt what the outcome would be. "Tell Kotoko we are coming. We know it would be difficult but we have proven every time that we are the better side and we would prove that this time too".

The fact that these words are coming from Kufuor would send a few chills down the spines of many Kotoko faithful. Kufuor has been a regular tormentor in chief for the Phobians against Kotoko with silky and sublime skills. Top scorer in the African champions league in 2000 and best Ghana player the same year, Kufuor is seeking to use Sunday's game as a platform to announce his return to the local scene after not too successful spells in Russia and China.

While there is every guarantee that the football would be good, there is no guarantee that this would be incident free. As the administrative manager of the Ghana League Clubs Association Kojo Fiano observed earlier in the week, the nature of matches between Hearts and Kotoko also guarantees trouble.

Fianoo's organization is organizing the tournament and he insists they would leave nothing to chance to make the stadium and its environs as safe as possible.

"We would do everything in our power including bringing in some military personal to maintain order at the gates and in the stands. We are dead serious about preventing trouble", Fiano says.

One of the surest ways to prevent disenchantment and trouble would be to have a middle man who would have no incline towards any side. Referees are human like all of us who make mistakes but in this crazy game called football where passion, not common sense and fairness reigns, they won't be considered human in the eyes of the seventy or so thousand fans who would screaming their heads off on Sunday.

Caption for picture: Razak would need to have his eyes wide opened for Sunday's clash against Hearts.