For Ole Gunnar Solskjaer after the long week of repentance, this was a game that turned into someone else’s tragedy, which was as good as the Manchester United manager might have hoped for after the wreckage of Liverpool last Sunday and all that talk of the end coming.
He is a man with a useful habit of salvaging a result each time his toes are nearing the precipice and suddenly the Champions League date with Atalanta in Bergamo on Tuesday and the visit of Manchester City in a week’s time look that bit less daunting.
Instead, Solskjaer saw close-up the makings of a managerial calamity with a full-scale mutiny directed at Nuno Espirito Santo amid the kind of defeat that can bring the end very quickly for a Tottenham Hotspur manager.
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It is Nuno thrust into survival mode: booed at half-time, booed for his substitution of Lucas Moura, and then finally the Spurs fans called for him to go. When United substitute Marcus Rashford added the third with four minutes of regulation time left the South Stand sang “We want Nuno out”, and as a chairman who is acutely aware of his own fragile relationship with the fanbase, Daniel Levy may just oblige them.
These were two clubs enduring crises of their own and for the Spurs manager, there is no goodwill from a heroic playing backstory to fall back upon.
There were too many abject performances among the Spurs players for any encouragement to be taken, and the lingering sense that too few of them wanted to save their manager’s skin. With a forward line of Harry Kane, Heung-min Son and Moura, Spurs managed not a single attempt on target. Their last such goalbound shot was before half-time of the defeat to West Ham six days previous.
By contrast, United took their chances when they arrived. The first two were scored by Cristiano Ronaldo and Edinson Cavani and each restored greater confidence. They had less of the possession but much more of the important stuff around the opposition’s goal.
The return of Raphael Varane to a five-man defence gave an added certainty. Later Solskjaer would anoint Scott McTominay as the man of the match. The system of three centre-halves, two wing-backs tucked in and a couple of defensive midfielders was the locked door that their manager craved. [Telegraph]
