Jose Mourinho, Mauricio Pochettino and why Manchester United vs Tottenham is more than just another early-season tie

On the brink of a real crisis, Mourinho’s side must dig in and consolidate, but Spurs have the chance to make life difficult for the home side and thereby make another leap under Pochettino

Across the top levels of Manchester United, they are currently backing Jose Mourinho to get everything back on track, but that hasn’t precluded some figures at board level naturally considering other possibilities. And if this is to really turn into “a Mourinho season” – to use a phrase Antonio Conte has so mischievously managed to spread – there is no doubt who the club idealise as a replacement.

It is not Zinedine Zidane, even if they admire him. It is not Massimo Allegri, even though they’ve been monitoring his plans for some time. It is of course the man Mourinho will face at Old Trafford on Monday: Tottenham Hotspur’s Mauricio Pochettino.

The Argentine would meet every requirement in the event of Mourinho leaving, from approach to team construction… except availability. United are now so wary of having to negotiate with Daniel Levy, aware of the fact Pochettino himself wants to some day manage Real Madrid, and also conscious of his genuine desire to build a dynasty at Spurs; to do something very different and definitive there.

It is that very sense of ambition that however also ensures this match has even more meaning than it would this early in the season, and even with United’s problems.

On the brink of a real crisis, Mourinho’s side must dig in and consolidate, but Spurs have the chance – and pressure – to make life difficult for the home side and thereby make another leap. It only adds an extra layer to this match that, to varying degrees, this has been the framing for both of Mourinho’s experiences of the fixture so far.

In December 2016 and October 2017, a wobbling United had been talked down and surging Spurs so talked up, only for the home side to upend everything and grind out 1-0 wins. Those victories however just continued one trend Pochettino hasn’t yet been able to break. The Argentine has been to Old Trafford four times, and never once scored nor picked up a single point. Such meekness has been so marked, especially at a time when the side have been so magnificent almost everywhere else.

Spurs’ only points there in the last 12 years actually came in the two seasons before his arrival – one 3-2 in 2012 inspired by Gareth Bale, another 2-1 in 2014 with David Moyes and Tim Sherwood as the managers – but those two wins were still preceded by six successive defeats. It has meant Tottenham have lost more times at Old Trafford than any other club has lost at any other away ground in the Premier League era.

And it’s got to the point where it is lamented around their Enfield training centre as just one of those things, an inherent flaw with tangible consequence but intangible cause. “We never do well at Old Trafford,” as one source rolled their eyes. Such a background makes Sir Alex Ferguson’s “lads, it’s Tottenham” statement all the fairer, and almost feeding that is captain Hugo Lloris’s arrest for drink-driving on the eve of such opportunity. But it is still a big opportunity, maybe Pochettino’s best to smash another ceiling at this club.

It is not just that United are again struggling or that they just lost to Brighton and Hove Albion. It is the manner of it all, as articulated by the comments of Leon Balogun following that 3-2.

Mourinho was powerless to stop United's defeat at Brighton (AFP/Getty Images)

“I said I had expected the Premier League to be quicker, but [the lads] told me this is always the kind of game you play against United. They like to slow it down a little bit sometimes. Liverpool is going to be completely different. I know how [Jürgen] Klopp likes to play. It’s going to be a lot quicker and a lot more intense.”

Spurs should be completely different, too. The feeling about Old Trafford at Spurs has meant that there is always almost a shrugging acceptance of a certain meekness in their performances there, but it should not be accepted here. Not when teams so much lower than them like Brighton are talking like that. Now is the timeto take command, to take the game to United, to press to an even greater level than Brighton and cause problems. There is real opportunity there. There is a vulnerability that can be further exposed, that can be punished.

If United are now as slow as sides like Brighton have identified, what could a fully firing Spurs do to them? It should be like the match at Wembley in January, where Pochettino’s side blasted into a 2-0 lead.

The big challenge for Mourinho now is to ensure it isn’t and somehow banish that vulnerability, but the growing problem is that this doesn’t currently seem to be a squad responding to him. He was unwilling to provide any answers in a terse pre-match conference that he turned up 30 minutes early for, as if to avoid questions, and that will only lead to the harsher question as to whether it is because he doesn’t actually have any answers at all. It is starting to look like that.

There is also an irony that one of the players who is genuinely among the Portuguese’s lieutenants and does respond to him, Nemanja Matic, may be most responsible for some of this vulnerability in a tactical sense. Although the Serbian does a supreme job of protecting a suspect defence, repeated sources at other clubs have said it is now being increasingly noted how he just doesn’t move the ball quick enough. The fact he is the team fulcrum means everything is then slowed down, with United forced back, and opposition sides given the opportunity to pounce. This could almost be visualised in Balogun’s words.

That, of course, then puts even more pressure on that fragile defence.

Toby Alderweireld was on Mourinho's summer shopping list (Getty)

The potential presence of Toby Alderweireld in the Spurs side only makes the fixture all the more pointed, since he is something the Portuguese wanted, and offers the experienced assurance at the back Mourinho so desired.

For all that the manager’s complaints may be justified in that regard, though, the failure to sign defenders doesn’t explain how bad they were at Brighton – a side built on a fraction of United’s resources. It’s not like they were facing Manchester City in that match, or a side even close to the champions. They have got the latter in Tottenham, and a proper test, at precisely the wrong time.

Except it’s possible that they might just be the right opposition, that this might be exactly the right type of game at a time when so much else is going on.

In his two years at Old Trafford, Mourinho has shown a capacity for rousing the team for such games, for suddenly solidity and resilience when they had looked ragged. And it is possible that the petulant display in Friday’s press conference could just be part of the performance, and attempt to distil all this fractious energy into something more barbed on Monday.

That was the case in those last two home matches against Tottenham, and they only followed on from his last match against Tottenham with Chelsea. That 0-0 at White Hart Lane in November 2015 was one of a only a few times in that fateful last season when a free-falling Chelsea looked like a stand-up Mourinho side.

It was almost as if he was irked by another rival team getting the kind of respect that used to be reserved for his sides, so it restored a focus. It could be seen on the day. There was an intensity of application to Chelsea that had been missing for so much of that chaotic campaign. It wasn’t sustainable for so many other reasons, but that is also why this match will reveal so much, and potentially reverberate so much.

One reason the Brighton match has been seen in such damning terms for one defeat is because it seemed to conspicuously show how, like at Chelsea in 2015-16, the connection between Mourinho and his players was broken.

If that is true, and United lose a second successive match out of their first three of the season, the pressure will really be on. It could just cause everything to escalate, for all the pre-existing problems to build to a proper crisis. If it isn’t, a win – or even a convincing performance – against a team like Tottenham will be temporarily enough to restore resilience and respect; to re-emphasise there is a steel here.

Much could come down to whether Spurs are willing to test that, whether they can at last step up at Old Trafford. It could be so influential as to whether Pochettino ever steps in at Old Trafford. That is one for the long-term future, but then this fixture already feels like it is so much more than one early-season game.