The good news for Manchester United is that, as the rain came down, the roof didn’t leak. They have managed to fix something at last at this great, beleaguered football club it seems.
That is where the positive stuff starts and ends, though. Erik ten Hag and his send ‘em out and hope for the best tactical masterplan continues to steer United down an alleyway marked irrelevant.
Ten Hag’s team have scored five goals so far this Premier League season and three of those came against Southampton. Leicester, Ipswich, Wolves and Everton have all scored more than Ten Hag’s failing bunch. Seems the seven they banged in against Barnsley here in the Carabao Cup a couple of weeks ago were not portentous of better times to come after all. Who would have thought it?
Here at a stadium that saved its ire for the referee, United were out played, out run and out thought by a Tottenham team and manager that embody everything they are not.
Tottenham and their manager Ange Postecoglou are not a perfect football team. Indeed they are quite beautifully flawed. But they are a team that likes to have the ball, likes to play with pace and with confidence and fundamentally knows what it is, what it would like to be and how it would like to play.
Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United suffered yet another blow as they lost to Tottenham
Tottenham had a better plan, a better attitude and most certainly have a better manager
It doesn’t always work. Of course it doesn’t and it remains to be seen whether Tottenham can prove themselves a course and distance team this time around. But the beauty about Postecoglou and his players is that you could dress them in another colour and ask them to wear face masks and you would still know it was them after five minutes of watching.
United? The only thing that marks them out as recognisable is their enduringly moribund results and the state of supreme denial that continues to cloud the judgements and the public pronouncements of their manager.
United have had their investment. That came last year from Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS group. Tottenham may yet have some of their own. Amanda Staveley, no longer tied to Newcastle United’s Saudi experiment, is sniffing around the edges. Spurs chairman Daniel Levy pretty much confirmed it at a fans’ forum last week.
For Tottenham some new money would represent another paving stone laid on a path towards prominence, stability and, perhaps at some point, some genuine success on the field. They already have the stadium and now have a manager in tune with what they claim to be their traditional values of risk and reward. United, for their part, hardly have any of that. They have some drawings now of what a new stadium may look like. The ‘Wembley of the North’ is what Ratcliffe calls it. Whether anyone has asked the north what it thinks, wants and needs is a conversation for another day.
On the field and off, United are lumbering. Tottenham, at the very least, have a recognisable stride pattern and this was one of the afternoons where the football fell into place for Postecoglou.
Tottenham were excellent from first minute to last. They should have scored more goals, striking a post and somehow failing to convert four one-on-one opportunities. Timo Werner – filling in for the hamstrung Heung-Min Son – missed two of them. Out of interest, has anyone ever seen the German score one of those?
This was Tottenham as Postecoglou sees them when he closes his eyes at night, though. Quick in thought and deed and fleet of foot, the visiting team pressed United in to their own half and squeezed and squeezed until something popped. Here it took just three minutes, their dashing central defender Micky van de Ven gliding through a huge gap in the red sea to set up Brennan Johnson at the far post.
Tottenham were dominant thereafter. A better plan, a better attitude and better energy levels. Better players? Maybe. A better manager? Most certainly.
Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham produced an excellent display and pressed relentlessly
Tottenham midfielder James Maddison showcased his range of impressive qualities
Patterns. That is what you see when you look at Postecoglou’s Tottenham. They were there earlier in the season when they were drawing unjustly at Leicester and losing equally harshly at Newcastle United. The results were not there but the patterns were and, to a degree, so were the performances. It was possible to look at that and see what was coming. It’s the same with United, only in a completely different and altogether less flattering way.
In the Tottenham midfield here, James Maddison was lovely to watch. He sits deep in Postecoglou’s formation but sets wheels in motion and is often there to join in as the move develops. He remains a beautifully deft footballer.
Asked about the dove tailing of Maddison and the scorer of the second goal, Dejan Kulusevski, Postecoglou put it neatly. ‘Maddison does damage with the ball and Kulusevski with his running,’ said the Tottenham manager.
Spurs now have an attacking focal point, too, in a way that United do not. Ten Haag asks players like Bruno Fernandes and Joshua Zirkzee to exist in and around a central striking position. It may work in the long run. Currently it is not. Tottenham’s formation is easier to identify. A wide player either side of Dominic Solanke.
The former Bournemouth striker continues to feel his way a little at his new club. He was not at his best here. But he did score and, just as importantly, occupied the United central defenders in a way that nobody did at the other end of the field.
United boss ten Hag was right to identify Bruno Fernandes’ red card as an important moment
It is difficult to expect United to improve when they keep on deploying the same approach
Ten Hag was within his rights to identify Fernandes’ red card as a crucial moment. It was a little harsh. Equally he was correct when he talked of the stress he saw in his players as soon as they conceded such an early goal. Tottenham smelled that, too, and capitalised on it.
All managers want to see repeat characteristics of play and both managers will have seen them here, just in different ways. When United play badly, they tend to do so in exactly the same way. Tottenham, set up as they always are, were the perfect opponent to capitalise.
Postecoglou and his players will hit more bumps in their own road. This week they travel to Hungary in Europe, for example, and next Sunday are at Brighton. It’s not easy.
They know what they are doing, though. They know who they are and what they are.
United? All Ten Hag had to offer on Sunday night was a suggestion that today would be a ‘new day’. What good a new day, though, if it’s shot through with the same problems that ruined the one that came before it?