If you're a big club and you're getting dunked on by Spurs, things are bad
Manchester United managed something against Spurs, but whether one of the worst performances of the Ten Hag era is worth shouting about may be debatable.
Just after an hour of football had been played at a sullen and stultified Old Trafford this afternoon, the television cameras lingered on a banner reading “The Impossible Dream”, a reference to Manchester United’s 1999 treble-winning team. A quarter of a century from that era-defining group of players, the idea of this Manchester United team being capable of scaling a tenth of their heights really does feel impossible.
Erik ten Hag had the summer to breathe some energy into inter midfield. They spent money on players. They offloaded some deadwood. There was no sense that anything like this was going to happen. But now here we all are, the last weekend in September, and history is repeating itself again. On Wednesday it was Twente celebrating coming away from Old Trafford with a Europa League draw, and on this time the benefactors were Tottenham Hotspur. Manchester United have been low-key underwhelming for most of this season, but the paucity of this really was surprising.
They were absolutely abject throughout the first half. It took less than three minutes for Mickey van de Ven to charge in a straight line through their central defence like a kid playing FIFA on the easiest skill setting, a Dutch hot knife through room-temperature butter. Brennan Johnson, now with four goals in four games and starting to bloom in the way which was presumably the rationale behind signing him in the first place, was on hand to tap in at the far post.
The chances continued to flow like fine wine. Johnson hit the inside of the post. Maddison got through but couldn’t lift the ball over Onana. Werner, the purest distillation of Spursy in a footballer that I think I’ve ever seen, went through on goal but had his shot blocked. When United broke, their main attacking outlet seemed to be Marcus Rashford, who appears to have been replaced by his Madam Tussauds equivalent.
And then, just when it felt as though United’s afternoon couldn’t really get any worse, it did. Bruno Fernandes hadn’t previously been sent off for Manchester United, but his foot scraping down James Maddison’s shin fell squarely within the criteria for a red card offence, and following some essentially expected pantomime histrionics, the Manchester United captain seemed to actually leave the pitch with a degree of resigned acceptance on his face. Kobbie Mainoo was sacrificed for something called a Mason Mount and didn’t look especially happy about it.
It’s at times such as these that the club must curse having put the entrance to the pitch in the corner of the ground, rather than by the halfway line. The half-time whistle blew to an extremely familiar chorus of booing, jeering and whistling. The only surprise was that, in terms of only being the one goal behind, they were still in the game at all.
That particular cause for optimism among United supporters lasted no longer than parity had at the start of the match. Two minutes and two seconds into the second half, Martinez swung himself into a tizz, Johnson broke on the right, and his deflected cross was flicked in by Dejan Kulusevski. 2-0. Old Trafford sounded pretty subdued at the start of the second half. By the time five minutes of it had been played, theirs were the only audible voices, and they were singing, “You’re getting sacked in the morning”.
The thing is, you look at this Manchester United midfield, and it’s just some bunch of blokes. One of them has got hair. Another has a beard. There’s a bleached blonde kid who’s really fast, but when he gets to the ball, well… then you really see a difference between what he does with it and what others at this level do.
And when they’re in this sort of mood, they’re the ideal team to play this absurdly high and hard press against because they are fundamentally frit. Look, I support Spurs. Game recognise game, here. The game of odds swung decisively in Spurs favour because even the element of risk that comes with Angeball was neutered by United’s’ anaemia in transitioning from having possession in a defensive position to creating an opportunity at the other end of the pitch. The Spurs defence was open enough to look as brittle as ever in its construction. Your first instinct, when they’re being attacked, is to think, “Jesus, where they hell are they are?” It’s just that this Manchester United attack seldom looked anything like incisive enough to puncture that.
They had their moments, because when you’ve spent tens of millions of pounds on footballers, you’ll always have a few. Casemiro may now almost entirely resemble a cola bottle, but muscle memory doesn’t completely disappear and his low shot across the Spurs goal midway through the second half was a heart in the mouth moment for those of us who are not keen on Spursiness on a Sunday afternoon. But when United did get forward, they were ponderous and cumbersome. When they had the ball, it always felt as though they were only two or three touches from giving it away.
With thirteen minutes to play, the result was put beyond any reasonable doubt when a corner from the left was flicked on and Dominic Solanke turned the ball over from close range to make it 3-0. That the goal was barely even celebrated to any significant extent spoke volumes of the paucity of the home team’s performance. Spurs were three up and it could easily have been double that number. By the full-time whistle, Old Trafford was a sea of already-vacated red seats.
Where on earth do United go from here? The pressure has been building under Erik ten Hag for some time. Has this been here all along? How short-sighted might it have been to give him a contract renewal for winning the FA Cup in the first place? From a Spurs point of view, it's difficult to even know what to say. A comfortable win away from home is certainly welcome. But… how well can you be said to have played when the opposition is this modest?
Because when it’s Old Trafford against this sort of Manchester United, it feels like you’ve been fighting a shadow. Celebrating it almost feels unbecoming, and if rivals are really thinking this (THEY WERE OLEING WITH THREE MINUTES STILL TO PLAY, FOR GOD’S SAKE! SPURS WERE!), it should be the jolt that the club actually needs. Problem is, it’s been more than a decade since that spark was really still there at Old Trafford, and there are just so few signs of it coming back.