The Premier League's two worst teams this season who haven't been relegated will meet in Bilbao with a place in the Champions League also on the line
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October 30, 2021. Tottenham hosted Manchester United in a match dubbed by the media as 'El Sackico'. New Spurs boss Nuno Espirito Santo had made a poor impression after accepting the job that summer, while Red Devils legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had taken the team backwards despite a promising 2020-21 campaign and the additions of Cristiano Ronaldo, Raphael Varane and Jadon Sancho to his squad.
The premise was simple: If there were to be a loser in north London, they would inevitably be fired and replaced by Italian coach Antonio Conte, who was keen to return to the Premier League. United ran out 3-0 winners and Nuno was given his marching orders.
Nearly four years on, a somewhat similar but completely different scenario is in play. Ange Postecoglou's Tottenham and Ruben Amorim's United will face off in the Europa League final on Wednesday in what has been billed as one of the lowest-quality European showpiece events of all time. They sit 17th and 16th in the Premier League, respectively, heading to the Estadio San Mames in Bilbao and would be facing far more scrutiny had their continental exploits been less fruitful and fortuitous.
Postecoglou, irrespective of what happens in Bilbao, ought to be a dead man walking, while Amorim has minimal excuses left to lean on to keep himself in the Old Trafford job.
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Amorim officially took the United gig on November 11 having failed to delay his arrival from Sporting CP until the end of the season. The Portuguese's impressive European form, including a 4-1 thrashing of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City, gave the Red Devils hope that his skillset would be transferable into a Premier League setting. Caretaker manager Ruud van Nistelrooy also left the team in a better place after leading them through an unbeaten four-match stint, building some momentum heading into an international break.
A 1-1 draw at a dogged Ipswich Town was Amorim's first taste of English football, and given the Tractor Boys' limp relegation back to the Championship since, it's a result that has not aged particularly well. In their next home league game, United breezed past Everton 4-0, but that remains their most convincing win of the domestic season by miles. They went to Manchester City and won 2-1 with a smash-and-grab comeback late on, while they held both Liverpool and Arsenal to draws and knocked the Gunners out of the FA Cup on penalties, but that's all there's been to shout about from the Stretford End.
There is little to suggest Amorim's methods are effective despite United's European run. They have taken only 24 points from his 26 Premier League games at the helm – extrapolated over a 38-match season, that works out at 35 points, four fewer than their current tally.
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After smashing City 4-0 at the Etihad Stadium back in November, Tottenham sat sixth in the Premier League table, but were only three points off the top five and four off second place. Fresh out of the blocks from the final international break until March, the feeling was they had finally discovered the momentum needed to kick on and find some consistency.
Then everything came crashing down. A couple of days later, it emerged goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario played much of that seismic victory with a fractured ankle, which required surgery and around two months of recovery. The bodies started to drop like flies – pretty much no one in the entire first-team squad was spared from injury over the winter, with the most notable absentees being starting centre-back pairing Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven.
Spurs failed to win any of their next five games, setting the tone for the long winter ahead. They progressed to the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup – knocking out United along the way – but won only one of their 11 league matches after seeing off City, and that came against rock-bottom Southampton.
For the most part, Postecoglou was given grace by supporters, critics and Spurs personnel alike due to an unprecedented injury crisis as he regularly leaned on young players and teenagers to plug gaps in the squad. Tottenham's thrill-a-minute principles didn't wane and the expectation was once key members returned to fitness that results would improve. Alas, that has not happened, and if anything performances have only worsened to the point of no return, even with silverware hanging in the balance.
In the Europa League, Spurs have developed a streetwise savviness that has served them well, yet they look a million miles off the pace domestically. 'Ange-ball' doesn't work on a week-to-week basis, and if they head coach won't change his ways, the head coach must be changed.
AFPToo stubborn for the wrong reasons
"It's just who we are mate," were the unforgettable words uttered by Postecoglou after nine-man Tottenham lost 4-1 at home to Chelsea in one of the craziest and most chaotic London derbies in the Premier League era back in November 2023. Spurs had tried to squeeze the Blues so high at their two-player disadvantage that they played an offside trap on the halfway line, and this gung-ho approach has largely been the story of the Australian's reign.
Meanwhile, Amorim has routinely insisted that he will not change his methodology or practicality of his own approach, despite it barely getting off the ground domestically and often having to fit square peg player profiles into round hole positions.
Both Tottenham and United have been Jekyll and Hyde like this season, however. Postecoglou and Amorim have shown tremendous in-game adaptability during their European runs, only for this to act as a safety blanket over their job security, and they play fast-and-loose football in the Premier League like a testing arena for their mad scientist experiments. If they had shown any sort of desire to tweak tactics domestically, they certainly wouldn't be hovering directly above the drop zone.
The two-sided question hanging over Postecoglou and Amorim then is do you stick with them because they have shown this tactical nous, or get rid because they have actively chosen to ignore that aspect of their coaching?
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Many of Amorim's press conferences this season have seen him figuratively pulling his hair out. The most infamous came back in January when United were beaten at home by Brighton: "I am not naïve. We are the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United. We have to acknowledge that and change that. In 10 games in the Premier League we won three, I know that. Imagine this for a fan of Man United, imagine this for me. You are getting a new coach who is losing more than the last coach. Imagine that. We need to survive this moment. I know that."
While Amorim hasn't totally stooped to such self-deprecation since, he has not been afraid to make a bleak picture appear even bleaker. He most recently had to walk back on claims he could quit due to bad results, though did admit he is wary he would be sacked instead if there is no uptick in form.
Postecoglou coasted through the middle third of the season in large part thanks to that aforementioned injury crisis, and the majority of Spurs' defeats this season have actually only come by one goal, suggesting in the long run there is scope for these results to be flipped back the other way with a bit more nuance. He hasn't, however, helped himself with his intense approach that didn't lend itself to the scarce resources at his disposal.
What's been difficult for both managers is that the only way to silence doubters and negativity in sports is through results, but they've barely given themselves a chance at success in the Premier League. If they were mid-table, they could be excused, but neither United or Spurs can even luck their way to points anymore.
