Preamble
Morning everyone and welcome to the first Premier League game of the weekend. It’s the Sergio Reguilon derby! It’s a replay of the last Europa League final! It can’t be as boring as that was!
Say what you like about Spurs, they are Ruben Amorim’s bogey team (and he has a few of those). They may have won only three home games in the league in the past year, two of them against promoted teams, but the other one was against Amorim’s United (1-0). They have also left Amorim empty-handed in the League Cup (4-3) and that Europa final (another 1-0).
Last season these two famous clubs finished 15th and 17th in the Premier League, keeping each other company on the slide to incompetence. This season they have at least found their way back to respectability: Spurs are up 11 places to sixth while United are up seven to eighth.
But Spurs have only done well away and United, apart from their triumph at Anfield, have only done well at home. United, as soon as they leave Salford, are a mid-table team (tenth in the away table); Spurs, at their own stadium, are still a piece of mouldy cheese (17th in the home table). On form, we can probably expect both of them to lose today.
The good news for Amorim is that his nemesis, Ange Postecoglou, is no longer there to say “Lads, it’s United”. His Spurs hoodoo may have been just an Ange hoodoo. The bad news for Amorim is that since the start of last season Spurs have four wins over United with three clean sheets and a combined score of 9-3. And they have four players who scored twice in those games, although three of them are now injured – James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke. So Brennan Johnson may have to do it all by himself, just as he did in Bilbao.
Thomas Frank needs to decide who’s ready to go again after the 4-0 cruise past FC Copenhagen. Amorim, with no European fixtures to worry about, needs to decide whether to stick with the XI who could only draw at Forest. The sole meeting so far between these managers, at Brentford six months ago, finished 4-3 to Frank. Given that both United and Spurs overhauled their attack in the summer while keeping faith with their defence, something similar seems perfectly plausible.
The kick-off is at 12.30pm (GMT) and I’ll be back soon with the teams.