The Guardian

Gatwick on Tuesday morning was full of Spurs fans. They were in the Pret a Manger, they were in the Pizza Express, they were in the Wagamama, but mostly they were standing gawping at the destination board, which featured a baffling number of Vueling flights to Bilbao, a squeezing of the schedule that led to inevitable delays and confusion.

The queue for the three open booths at passport control in Bilbao was a vast python of white shirts, speckled with the occasional tree green or purple. The bus into town was almost entirely Spurs, with a handful of businessmen and a bewildered older couple returning from their holidays, who admitted they had no idea their city was hosting a major European final.

In fairness, it has not felt much like a major European final. This is 16th against 17th in the Premier League, a battle of two sides who have each won one of their past 10 league games. As such, it has been regarded as an indictment of the inequitable distribution of resources in the modern world and something from a Victorian freak show, simultaneously an English boot grinding its studs forever into the face of Europe and a bout between a blind bear and a pair of three-legged badgers. None of which is entirely unfair, and yet it is a major European final, as the mass migration of excited fans attests.

That a final could comprise two such struggling teams is undeniably funny, but the game matters. For Tottenham, this could be a first trophy since 2008 and a first European trophy since 1984; for United, it could, inexplicably, be a third piece of silverware in successive seasons, and a seventh European trophy.

Neither side will need reminding that their ostensibly more successful local rivals have won nothing this season.

Almost more importantly in the remorselessly capitalistic environment of the modern game, victory on Wednesday would secure passage to next season’s Champions League, with all the financial benefits that will bring. It could rival the Championship playoff final as the most valuable game in English football. The way potential qualification for the Champions League has been touted as a means of salvaging dismal seasons is itself indicative of the way football has been financialised.

A trophy may have meant the world for Crystal Palace on Saturday, but for at least some at United and Spurs (although not Ange Postecoglou, as he was determined to point out), the Europa League feels like a means to a more lucrative ends; winning silverware in order to generate the revenue that will allow them to generate more revenue. The game, as Danny Blanchflower nearly said, is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and creating sustainable revenue streams for the future.

When Postecoglou arrived at Tottenham, he seemed a natural fit. His attitude to the game had been shaped by Ferenc Puskas, who coached him at South Melbourne, and there was a stylistic congruence between Arthur Rowe’s Tottenham of the early 1950s, which established the push‑and-run style, and the ethos of Hungarian football in the same period.

For all Postecoglou’s cussed insistence that the way he plays is the way he plays, Spurs’ best performances this season have been in away games when they have played in a style that would not be described as Angeball. When they beat Manchester City 4-0 at the Etihad Stadium, it was by playing on the counter and controlling the game in the second half. The Europa League wins at Eintracht Frankfurt and Bodø/ Glimt were almost like tactical plans devised by José Mourinho, stifling their opponents and assuming superior quality or physicality would tell in the end.

Which presents Postecoglou with a conundrum. Tottenham have beaten United three times this season: twice with classic Angeball and once in a grim scrap when neither side played remotely well. Does he go with what worked at Old Trafford in the league and at home in the Carabao Cup or does he go with what has worked in Europe and opt for something more cautious?

He may not have much option. Spurs do not have the natural advantage they had over Frankfurt and Bodø/Glimt, but neither are they likely to have their three most creative midfielders with James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski out and Lucas Bergvall a major doubt. That probably means Yves Bissouma and Rodrigo Bentancur sitting with Pape Matar Sarr driving forward.

It had looked as though Postecoglou’s team without a midfield would be facing Ruben Amorim’s team without a defence, although with Leny Yoro and Diogo Dalot back in training the injury situation at United is not as acute as it had appeared. If there is an explanation for the disparity in United’s European and domestic form this season, it is probably that the lower pace of the Europa League allows players such as Casemiro and Harry Maguire to play under less immediate physical pressure. The dilemma for Postecoglou, then, is how to press them without losing the defensive structure that saw Spurs through the past two rounds.

Despite all the noise around it, the talk of finals of the undeserving and the economic rewards on offer, this is, almost despite itself, a major final. Somebody will win a trophy and whatever else that means it will be celebrated on the night and go down in posterity. Football is made of this.

Ange Postecoglou said he had left plenty of his previous jobs after the most important matches and achievements as he sounded resigned to his fate at Tottenham before the Europa League final against Manchester United on Wednesday. The manager is not expected to carry on into next season after a dismal Premier League campaign in which his team have lost 21 times and lag 17th in the table before the final game against Brighton on Sunday.

The showpiece against United here offers Postecoglou the opportunity to lead Spurs to a first trophy since 2008 and he made clear that his focus was trained on what would be a momentous feat. Yet the subject of his future is an unavoidable sideshow and he did not run from it on Tuesday. What was also striking was Postecoglou’s suggestion that he was not ready to leave, believing his work at the club was far from finished.

“I’ve said to the lads from day one that nothing is guaranteed in life, nothing is guaranteed in sport,” Postecoglou said. “You just need to try and make sure you take every opportunity before you. That’s what I have done my whole career. I’ve been in this position before where the big game was the last game I managed. It’s not unusual territory for me.

“I have always navigated it pretty well because, for me, nothing is more important than my responsibility for this football club and its fans. Me, the players … our mind is only on one thing and that is to create something special.

“I qualified for a World Cup [with Australia] and left. I won the treble with Celtic and left. I won at Brisbane and left. It’s more common than you think.”

Postecoglou reacted spikily to the suggestion that his future would be decided by the Spurs hierarchy. “My future is assured,” he said. “I wouldn’t be the first person who changes job. We all change jobs. I am sure you’ve had more than one job.

“I have got a beautiful family, I’ve got a great life. I’ll keep on winning trophies until I finish – wherever that is. Don’t worry about my future. My future is not intertwined with anything. My future is assured provided, God willing, my health remains, my beautiful family is beside me, my friends … there is nothing wrong with my future, mate. Don’t stress. Sleep easy tonight. I’ll be OK.”

It has been possible to wonder whether Postecoglou might ride off into the sunset if he were to beat United, content he had achieved his ends at Spurs. He gave it short shrift. “No. Because I don’t think my job is done here. I really feel like we are building something and what a trophy does is hopefully accelerate that.

“It is quite obvious with the challenges we’ve had this year, which are well chronicled, but there is some reasoning in the context of that. But also there has been some growth and I would like to see [that] through. Whether that happens or not is not that important right now, but I don’t think this job is finished, far from it. I certainly feel there is some growth there, that we can take this club to where it needs to be.”

Postecoglou said he had not felt the need to address the subject of what happens next in terms of himself with the players. “I’ve said before that whatever happens beyond tomorrow is kind of irrelevant when you think about the opportunity that exists right now.

“If I was worried about my tenure at this football club, it’s fair to say we wouldn’t have been in this position [in the final] because I would have been distracted long ago. Whatever happens after, I’m very, very comfortable.”

Postecoglou bristled with defiance, a window into his soul provided when he slaughtered a journalist he has always seemed to respect; the writer had said that Postecoglou was in a strange position before the final, “teetering between hero and clown” – the latter phrase going down incredibly badly.

Postecoglou spoke emotionally of his late father, Jim, who he said would always be with him, and also of his Greek-Australian heritage. Postecoglou will become the first Greek or Australian to manage in a European final. “I love being Greek, I love being in Greece, it’s where I’ll retire one day,” he said. “And I love that I grew up in Australia. When you grow up there, you have the attitude when it comes to sport that you’ll take on anyone. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are.”

Postecoglou reported that Pape Matar Sarr was available after picking up a knock at Aston Villa last Friday. He reiterated that Lucas Bergvall was out with an ankle injury.

BIGGER THE VASE, BIGGER THE COST

With more than 80,000 English football fans expected to descend on Bilbao for the Bigger Vase final, it’s safe to assume that approximately half of them will return home in despair, while almost all of them will be seriously out of pocket. But despite its status as a fine location with a proud football heritage, Bilbao doesn’t have the infrastructure to cope with the myriad demands that come with hosting a game between the 16th and 17th best teams in England. With “budget” flights costing well north of a grand and even the most low-rent accommodation priced up at £500-plus a night, one can but hope for the sake of those Spurs and Manchester United fans who use plane, train, automobile or boat to arrive in northern Spain for this season-defining match that Bilbao has no shortage of doorways and park benches. Expect plenty to be occupied on Tuesday evening by green-around-the-gills landlubbers who set off on Sunday evening’s Portsmouth ferry, a vessel which docked in Bilbao earlier.

The players and staff of both clubs involved are likely to be feeling similarly queasy before an encounter that would be considerably less stressful if it weren’t for the fact they have to play each other. Having left the acrid, smouldering skips that constitute their respective domestic campaigns behind them for one last shot at redemption at San Mamés, all concerned will be painfully aware of the potentially damaging consequences of defeat. While silverware in the form of Bigger Vase, a place in next season’s Bigger Cup and tens of millions of pounds are on the line, the sheer volume of nationwide and international derision that will be heaped upon all connected with whichever side loses this final is uncontemplatable. After the debacle of Spurs’ and United’s seasons, for either to lose a Bigger Vase final against [insert random mid-table European side here] would hurt but be reasonably tolerable. For either to lose a Bigger Vase final against the other will prompt generational levels of entirely-justified ridicule.

“You can imagine what impact that will have on their lives, their family’s lives, the people who are in their circle,” sighed Ange Postecoglou, who it’s only fair to point out was contemplating the consequences of a Spurs triumph. “It will be something they never forget and it’ll be something that they’ll share with two, three generations of people in their circle. So it doesn’t escape me – the enormity of it.” And in the event of defeat? “You can imagine what impact that will have on their lives, their family’s lives, the people who are in their circle etc, and so on,” he added because sometimes the gags just write themselves. Meanwhile in the United camp, Ange’s opposite number was musing on the quirks of fate that have led to English football’s most high-profile crisis clubs meeting in this winner-takes-all showdown. “I think it will have an impact on the fans – and when I say ‘the fans’ I mean our fans – because they need this win,” roared Ruben Amorim. “They will look at the coach in a different way, because it would mean [Bigger Cup] football. These games have to be won and if you don’t there is nothing left but sadness.” Well, sadness, a sleepless night on a Bilbao bench and a miserable, overpriced journey home to a lifetime of unbridled mockery.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

A very beautiful career is coming to an end, a very full life. I feel very fortunate for what I’ve experienced. I didn’t expect it, but I think the time has come and I feel like bringing it to a close here” – former Barcelona, Liverpool and Spain vibes-man, Pepe Reina, is hanging up his gloves aged 7842 after Como’s final game of the season on Friday. He might have a busy last day at the office given Inter will be desperately fighting for the title. Look out for any loose beachballs, Pepe!

Trust the Germans to have a word to describe every situation or feeling. Liverpool’s current performance (or lack of) can be defined as Erfüllungsleere” – Krishna Moorthy.

Given this appears to be the year of the underdog in cup finals, Tottenham and Manchester United must be really optimistic” – Martyn Shapter.

Re: Memory Lane (yesterday’s Football Daily, full email edition) – that mascot got a bit more than they bargained for” – Jim Hearson.

I’d question the wisdom of publishing both of Michael Glogower’s pun-laden Eredivisie missives in recent letters sections. Remember, two De Jongs don’t make a right …” – Derek McGee.

Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winners are … Krishna Moorthy, who wins some Football Weekly merch. We’ll be in touch. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, can be viewed here.

RECOMMENDED LOOKING

It’s David Squires on … moving scenes and mind games as Crystal Palace win the FA Cup.

“It’s easy when things aren’t going well to come up with excuses,” Brennan Johnson says and, with things not going well for him at Tottenham, there was plenty of stuff that he could have hidden behind.

The weight of the £47.5m fee which took him from Nottingham Forest in September 2023; Spurs have paid more for only three players in their history. The sky-high expectations of being at one of London’s glamour clubs. Apart from a loan to League One Lincoln in 2020-21, Johnson had known life only in Nottingham and at Forest, whose academy he joined at the age of eight. And then there was the social media abuse; kryptonite for confidence.

If there was a low point for Johnson, it surely came after the derby defeat at home to Arsenal last September when he looked at his Instagram account and was assailed by the hurtfulness of the messages. The winger made the decision to step away from his socials but more than that, to reach even deeper into the depths of his resolve; to blot out the noise and the naysayers, to focus on what he could control.

Johnson does not lack mental toughness. There was always pressure on him as he grew up in West Bridgford to the south of Nottingham and made his way at Forest because his father, David, had been a favourite at the club, scoring 50 goals for them across six seasons after the turn of the millennium. Johnson withstood that.

It has always been about the hard yards for him; he knows he has the ability on the ball but it is nothing without the physical application. And so the 23-year-old focused on making the right runs, better runs, getting into the areas where the Spurs manager, Ange Postecoglou, wanted him.

The results have been spectacular. As Johnson prepares for the Europa League final against Manchester United in Bilbao on Wednesday, he does so as Spurs’s top scorer with 17 in all competitions – plus seven assists. The turning point came straight after the Arsenal game when he got his first goal of the season – the stoppage-time winner at Coventry in the Carabao Cup. He would score in each of Spurs’s next five matches, including against United at Old Trafford in the 3-0 Premier League win.

“It was just about trying to nail down the stuff I could do,” Johnson says. “So, a lot of work and a bit of luck when you get into those positions but just trying to train as hard as I can and be in the position.”

Johnson contributed five goals and 11 assists in his debut Spurs campaign and his greater productivity this time out is best talked up by the line that says no player not called Kane or Son has scored more for the club in a single season since Dele Alli got 22 in 2016-17.

It is still possible to feel that Johnson is not fully appreciated; he has somehow drifted under the radar. The idea is linked to the notion that Spurs fans want David Ginola on the wing. They prefer aesthetes to athletes. But Postecoglou is not the only modern manager who will tell you that they need runners, first and foremost. Johnson’s in-game physical data has been consistently excellent and Postecoglou has praised him for his work ethic, his receptiveness to feedback. Which brings us back to those runs.

Postecoglou has joked that he would love to be a winger in his team and there is certainly a trademark Johnson goal – a burst from beyond the far post, sometimes in front of a defender, to meet a low cross from the left with a first-time close-range finish. Ten of his 22 for Spurs have followed the blueprint, one being the goal at Old Trafford after a storming Micky van de Ven run and cross.

“It’s a demand that the manager puts on us to be in the back post,” Johnson says. “Last season, there were a few instances where I wasn’t in the right position and he gets frustrated because people think it’s a tap-in but if you’re not there then it goes out for a throw-in.

“It’s knowing who I am playing with, knowing the type of crosses I am going to get, almost studying other players in the team. This season I made it clear that I had to be in the right positions to try and score.”

Johnson has played in previous showpieces, including the 2022 Championship playoff final in which Forest beat Huddersfield. He was on the losing Lincoln team in the 2021 League One playoff final against Blackpool. He downplays the emotional detail before this game about how his father started his career as a trainee at United; he did not make a first-team appearance for them. But there is surely something to be taken from Spurs having beaten United in all three domestic meetings this season, including the Carabao Cup quarter-final.

“We can’t rely on that,” Johnson says. “It’s about coming up with a plan because each time we’ve beaten them has been down to different reasons. I feel like we’ve done good work preparing for Man United and this is a new opportunity. We want to be as confident as we can.”

It was never meant to be a “panacea”, as Ange Postecoglou would say; possibly because the ills at Tottenham are so numerous. Winning a cup would be fabulous, hugely welcome but, according to the manager, it would not – in isolation, at least – offer the prospect of sustained success. Which was the target when he came to the club in the summer of 2023.

Remember Postecoglou’s attitude after he exited the Carabao Cup with a weakened team at Fulham in the early weeks of his tenure? “I’m here because I want to create a club that has the opportunity to win things on a yearly basis,” he said. “There’s a difference. Us winning a Carabao Cup and finishing 10th is not what I think this club is about.”

To Postecoglou, it was about putting down firm foundations and building something meaningful, consistency in the Premier League the priority, the truest barometer of progress. Do that and the rest will take care of itself. Postecoglou was still preaching from this page of his gospel before the November international break this season.

“I could be going: ‘Let’s just win a trophy this season and everything will be fine,’” he said. “But if we win a trophy, finish 10th and five games into next year I get sacked – not that it’s about me – but then the club has to change direction again. So have you really done anything? I don’t think so. It’s not going to be one simple thing that opens the floodgates.”

We hear a lot from Postecoglou – too much, he will tell you with that dry humour of his, the self‑deprecating edge which fans do not always see when he faces the TV cameras. It can be obscured by his rock solid self-belief, how he almost never takes a backward step. Postecoglou does not love being the lone public voice of the senior management at Spurs. There have been times when he has looked isolated; unsupported, even. File it alongside the crosses he has to bear.

But if Postecoglou is generous with his time, he has shown himself to be an expert manipulator of the narrative; deft and compelling. And as he approaches one of the biggest games of his life – the Europa League final against Manchester United in Bilbao on Wednesday – it has been a shift in his mission statement that has shone a light on where Spurs are as a club; fighting to escape oppressive shackles, a climate of angst and negativity. Where he finds himself, as well.

Postecoglou surely still believes his line about how a first trophy for the club since 2008 would not sling-shot them into the elite. But things have changed, his personal situation, too. As Spurs endure one of the worst league seasons in their history, 21 defeats (and counting) starting to spell the end for Postecoglou, he has come to regard victory against United as having silver-bullet potential – certainly in terms of the biggest single thing holding the club back.

Postecoglou has had his fill of the mockery that has accompanied Tottenham’s silverware drought; the idea, pushed remorselessly by their detractors, that it will always go wrong for them. He has spoken of a “hysteria” around the club that is “premeditated for a certain outcome”.

Plainly, it is damaging for the players; it can get inside their heads, real self-fulfilling prophecy stuff. Postecoglou’s conclusion? Only a trophy can provide release, a step towards the grander times that he originally envisaged. “With all of these things, there’s only one remedy: win,” he has said.

Postecoglou has concentrated on instilling conviction in his players, having essentially conceded defeat in his efforts to control what goes on in the wider environment, taking in the fans’ anxieties, how their insecurities are fed by the entrenched narratives. “A losing battle,” has been Postecoglou’s take.

There was a reason why the club shared the video of Postecoglou’s speech in the dressing room after the semi-final second-leg win at Bodø/Glimt. It was touching, a look at how he can draw people in and inspire them. “You can change things,” Postecoglou told the players. “I keep saying to you: ‘This is the group that is going to do it.’”

Postecoglou’s idea in recent months has been to reframe the challenge, to have the players see a “greater purpose” than merely winning a trophy and “shutting people’s mouths up”. In other words, to make it a turning point in terms of the club’s trajectory and the way it is perceived. And, indeed, how it perceives itself.

It feels as if there is an element of legacy protection about Postecoglou’s positioning and it goes beyond the ‘I always win a trophy in my second season’ shtick. When he said this after the derby defeat against Arsenal in September, he did not mean it to sound like a boast. It was just a statement of fact, defiant and typically punchy, designed to inspire confidence.

What Postecoglou has wanted to do is remind people of the situation that he inherited at Spurs. Morale was low after Antonio Conte’s scorching of the earth. The team had finished eighth. There was no European football for the first time since 2009-10. Harry Kane was about to be sold.

Postecoglou was charged with changing the style of play, moving away from the counter-punching of José Mourinho, Nuno Espírito Santo and Conte. The demand was for greater entertainment. And he was charged with overseeing a squad overhaul which had a focus on younger players with potential. Spurs have got rid of a lot of experienced players and if none of those moved on have been greatly mourned – apart from Kane – the collective loss of nous has been felt this season.

“We’ve signed a lot of young players with the right kind of thinking for the future,” Postecoglou has said. “That’s costing us now because we don’t have a squad that can cope with what it’s going through now.”

The taking of a new direction was never going to be straightforward and that is before all of the additional elements are factored in, mainly the climate outside the first-team bubble. Postecoglou has spoken of how there is never anyone who defends the interests of the club in public apart from him. How there are only people, usually pundits, who pile in to press a finger on the sores, to diminish and demean. Postecoglou has felt this ever more keenly and, frankly, he has been unable to manage it. There has also been the distraction of the anti-Daniel Levy movement among the fanbase and even the in-house mole who has leaked sensitive injury information.

The silence from the top of the club has been difficult to ignore, never more so than when Levy issued his annual chairman’s statement at the end of March and failed to mention Postecoglou. You did not need to be a longtime Levy watcher to deduce that this was bad news. Since then, Postecoglou has made a number of wisecracks about whether he will last beyond the end of the season. It is as if he has been told something.

Could Postecoglou sell a season in which he won the Europa League but finished 17th as a success? Bear in mind that Spurs have never lost more in a 38-game league campaign. Their record league low is the 22 defeats from 1934‑35 when they were relegated – and that was across 42 matches.

Postecoglou has tap-danced at every turn, citing the injury crisis that hurt him so badly and, more recently, how he has put everything on the Europa League. It is worth noting that the supporters have never made calls inside stadiums for him to be sacked, albeit there have been times when they have angrily expressed frustration with him. As he approaches his 100th game for the club, Postecoglou continues to dance.

“My view was that’s what I’ll get judged on,” Postecoglou said last Monday of Spurs’ hunt for a trophy. “I could have been sitting here fifth last year, fifth this year … and maybe people wouldn’t be waiting for the white smoke to see if it’s my last season. But they’d still be saying: ‘That’s great, Ange. But it’s been done before. Until the club wins something, you haven’t made an impact.’ I kind of knew throughout my tenure last year that that’s what I was going to be judged on.”

It might not have been what Postecoglou wanted. But we are where we are.

Micky van de Ven remembers being told that he would never win a trophy in his career after he moved to Tottenham. But the centre-half, who was signed by Ange Postecoglou from Wolfsburg in the summer of 2023, says the collective determination within the club to break the silverware curse will fuel them in Wednesday’s Europa League final against Manchester United in Bilbao. Spurs have won nothing since the 2008 League Cup.

“It will be a big thing, of course, because everybody knows that when you join Tottenham, you get the words through of: ‘Ah, you’re not going to win a trophy, you will be trophyless for the rest of your career,’” Van de Ven said. “All the guys that came up here were like: ‘We’re going to change something about this club.’

“It was the gaffer and it was the whole squad who said: ‘We’re going to come here and change something.’ For us, it’s the job now to make this happen in Bilbao.”

Van de Ven was asked who had told him he would never win anything after going to Spurs. “It’s these people on social media, you know?” the 24-year-old replied. “These banter people that you don’t take really serious. It did not play on my mind, not even a little bit.”

The Dutch defender is among the many players who continue to fight for Postecoglou, who is on the brink of losing his job after 21 league defeats this season – the most in club history over a 38-game campaign.

“We have all been standing behind the gaffer since day one, since he joined here,” Van de Ven said. “He showed his quality, he brought us to a European final. Of course, he’s getting a lot of doubt from the media and we see these things. But I think he proved all you guys wrong and we’re standing in a European final, so hopefully we can lift the trophy. Not only for us but also for him.

“We all know we play for a big club. This club deserves trophies. That’s the truth. If you look at the quality in the squad, we deserve a trophy. It has been a tough season but we can end this perfectly by winning a prize.”

Postecoglou’s hopes have been fired since Van de Ven and his other first-choice defensive selections returned from injury. Since the second leg of the last-16 tie against AZ, the goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario and the defenders Pedro Porro, Cristian Romero, Van de Ven and Destiny Udogie have been available.

Postecoglou picked Djed Spence over Udogie against AZ but, that apart, he has relied on the quintet en route the final, being rewarded with some assured performances, especially in the 1-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt in the quarter-final second leg which secured a 2-1 aggregate victory.

Van de Ven’s partnership with Romero in the middle is fundamental. “We just feel each other in the game,” Van de Ven said. “If he does something, I know how I need to cover him, how I can help him. On the other side it’s the same – when I have the ball, he knows how to cover me.

“From the beginning I felt a strong connection with him but the more games you play together the more you start feeling each other and knowing each other’s qualities. It’s an unbelievable connection that I have with him now.”

The best thing about football is what a silly, mercurial game it is. You can have all the money or political clout in the world. You can put in place meticulously thought-out projects. You can think and prepare and invest and plan, and football will still spit out a Europa League final between Tottenham and Manchester United. Strategise that.

Thousands will travel to Bilbao without tickets, many will end up sleeping rough, the phone network may collapse. It will be chaotic and anarchic and at its heart will be a game between two teams desperate for victory, whose presence in the final is utterly bewildering. And in that bonkersness may lie brilliance.

The rest of the world is entitled to disagree but for English football there’s a sense – after the lack of drama over the final three months of the Premier League season, the deferential plod to anoint Liverpool, and the almost embarrassed averting of the eyes from the relegation of Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich – that we deserve this. The Europa League final will be the biggest game between two Premier League sides this year, perhaps this season.

It’s ridiculous, of course. They’ve both been terrible this season. United and Spurs are not 16th and 17th in the league by chance. Between them they’ve won two of 18 league games since the end of February. Yet both have the chance to end the season with a night of glory, a trophy and Champions League qualification.

The sense is that for United, who have somehow lifted silverware in each of the last two seasons, what matters most is a place in the Champions League and the easing of profitability and sustainability rules pressures. For Spurs, having not won anything since 2008, the silverware perhaps matters more, although increased revenue should make the spending that is necessary more likely.

United’s journey has been truly absurd. Very few roads to European glory have involved being pegged back to 2-2 after being two goals up at Newport, as they were in the fourth round of the FA Cup last season. There followed a 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest in subtle homage to Mark Robins in 1990, a 4-3 extra-time win over Liverpool that ended with Bruno Fernandes at the back of midfield and Antony at left-back, a semi-final against Coventry in which they squandered a 3-0 lead and would have lost but for the narrowest of offside decisions by the video assistant referee, and then an uncharacteristically competent victory against Manchester City in the final. It was a Cup run for the ages, so daft it felt predestined; without it, United would not even have been in the Europa League. The extra-time comeback from 4-2 down to beat Lyon 5-4, a game in which Harry Maguire at key moments impersonated both Garrincha and Dixie Dean, was simply of a ludicrous piece with what had gone before.

If these were two teams you might expect to finish fourth- and fifth-bottom of the Premier League – Bournemouth v Nottingham Forest, say, if you go by payroll – this would feel rather different: quirky, certainly, and perhaps not good in that European finals inevitably feel less special when they involve two sides from the same nation, used to routine league meetings, but equally not offensive to footballing logic and good taste.

That it is an all-English affair is not that unusual. This will be Tottenham’s sixth European final; half of them have been against English opposition. Early in the 1971-72 season, the Spurs manager, Bill Nicholson, offered his players’ wives and girlfriends a trip to the away leg of the final. They eagerly agreed, looking excitedly at possible destinations. Where would they end up? Vienna, perhaps? Madrid? Milan? Turin? Even Setúbal had an appeal. They got to go to Wolverhampton.

That was the first season after the reimagining of the Fairs Cup as the Uefa Cup. One-country finals have been a feature from the start: this year’s will be the 11th. But it is the second all-English final in seven seasons and, along with Chelsea’s saunter into the Conference League final, that fits with the more general pattern of English domination. Given the Spanish control of the competition in recent years – nine wins since 2010 – it’s perhaps worth tempering any unease, but this does feel like just another indication of the Premier League’s financial supremacy: 14 of the wealthiest 30 clubs in the world by revenue are English.

Was European competition given for this, to offer a back door into the Champions League so two giants (the fourth- and ninth-richest clubs in the world) could salvage what have been otherwise appalling seasons? Clearly it wasn’t, but then it’s a rare thing for clubs of the status and stature of United, Spurs and Chelsea to not be in the Champions League.

Hamburg, Schalke, Köln and Hertha Berlin have been in the German second division this season it’s true, and there is perhaps some broader point there about how vast old clubs can be outsmarted by nimbler and more progressive disruptors, but those four German sides have three European trophies and seven postwar league titles between them. United, Chelsea and Spurs have 14 European trophies and 26 postwar league titles. They are bigger.

Ideally the Europa League would be for big sides from the medium-sized countries and medium-sized clubs from the big countries, as it has been for the past couple of decades. Sevilla and Atlético Madrid have dominated but within all the non-Big Two Spanish success there have also been finals for teams from Russia, Ukraine, Scotland, Portugal and the Netherlands, as well as Middlesbrough, Fulham, Eintracht Frankfurt, Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen. That feels right: not the very highest level, but a good spread from the next tier down.

Ange Postecoglou surely felt like crying but at the final whistle emotions appeared to be running highest for Emiliano Martínez. The Aston Villa goalkeeper was visibly moved as he waved to supporters upon leaving the pitch and was in tears as he headed down the tunnel. Afterwards Unai Emery, mindful of the power of those profitability and sustainability calculations, did not exactly extinguish suggestions this could have been Martínez’s final game at Villa Park.

Martínez played his part in a huge win for Villa in their attempt to qualify again for the Champions League, though they may still require favours. Emery checked his phone as he entered his post-match press conference to see confirmation of Chelsea’s win over Manchester United.

“We are winning but it’s not in our hands,” the Villa manager said. Asked if this could be Martinez’s final home match, Emery replied: “I don’t know, we will see about the team, the players … we will see about everything, how we are going to try and get better for the new season.”

For Postecoglou, it was another unedifying defeat and as preparation for Wednesday’s Europa League final against Manchester United goes, this was another demoralising takeaway. By the end the early promise of their fit-again captain, Son Heung-min, had fizzled out. At this point it is intriguing to consider quite how many bruising results Spurs can stomach in one season. This was their 25th defeat of the campaign in all competitions, equalling the club record for a single season, set in 1991-92, and Tottenham have now lost eight of their past 11 top-flight matches.

Postecoglou made three changes from Sunday’s defeat by Crystal Palace but Son and Wilson Odobert, who filled in for the injured Dejan Kulusevski, may be the only ones to start both here and in Spain. The January signing Antonin Kinsky again deputised for Guglielmo Vicario, who was on the bench, and the defensive trio of Destiny Udogie, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven trained at Spurs’s base rather than travelling to Villa Park, a decision Postecoglou defended.

“They stayed at home, did a really strong session and come Wednesday they are all available and that is the most important thing,” the Spurs manager said. “When those guys play, with Vic in goal, our chances of success significantly improve.”

That soundbite was a damning if unsurprising indictment for the rest of them, including Sergio Reguilón, who was drafted in for his first Premier League start of the season and his first for Tottenham since April 2022, when Antonio Conte was in charge. His last appearance came in the FA Cup third round at Tamworth and since Spurs were taken to extra time there it has felt like a never-ending sticky patch. There seemed more bad news when Pape Matar Sarr departed early in the second half with a back problem but Postecoglou said his withdrawal was precautionary.

Until scoring Villa appeared a touch fraught, a little too keen to record a win that moves them level with Newcastle. Spurs also had a couple of decent chances, Martínez making a superb save with his foot after 16 minutes to repel Odobert’s flicked effort. Moments earlier Martínez fumed at how far Odobert was allowed to carry the ball before locating Son, who sent a powerful shot against a stanchion.

Villa had started slowly after the interval. Emery waved his players forward and hopped on the touchline. Then Kevin Danso blocked an Ian Maatsen shot and at the subsequent corner Villa sparked into life. John McGinn sent the ball towards the back post, where Ollie Watkins directed a header towards the six-yard box and Ezri Konsa, after eluding his marker, Mathys Tel, sent a shot in through the legs of the Spurs substitute Yves Bissouma. Konsa credited Villa’s set piece coach, Austin MacPhee. “We worked on that specific corner and it came off,” the England defender said.

Postecoglou, arms folded, swivelled in the dugout wearing that familiar despondent face. Things could have spiralled for Spurs but a minute later Kinsky made a smart save after the ball trickled through to Watkins. Villa’s home form has been imperious, their sole league defeat in another sparkling campaign coming against Arsenal here in August, and they assumed total control.

Spurs were shot and on 73 minutes Boubacar Kamara sidestepped Bissouma on the edge of the box before rattling a low shot past Kinsky. At the time Spurs were readying a double change. Dominic Solanke and Rodrigo Bentancur entered and Brennan Johnson, a former Villa target, was later introduced off the bench. Postecoglou has to pray that potentially wholesale changes on Wednesday will bring a happy ending to an otherwise truly torrid season. It has been that way for a while.

The pre-match postbag is here!

Jim on what the Spurs line-up tells us about next week’s final:

The front line for Spurs today is interesting. I think Tel may be playing as the striker with Son as a number 10. With Kulusevski out it’s not clear who will fill in for Madison on Wednesday, and any of Tel, Son, or Odobert could be auditioning for that role this evening.

Jeremy with some Rashford analysis:

Rashford will not be playing any part in Villa’s last two games this season, just like last season at VeryOld Trafford, but he remains a constant source of fascination for fans and neutrals, an enigma wrapped in clouds of doubt and uncertainty. If only he could deliver on the pitch as he has on the social level, let’s not forget, he shamed a government and became an overnight people-person. We all think of him as a 22-year-old with chin fuzz and great attitude, he’s nearly 28 and should be in the prime of his life, but here he is, struggling for identity, form and a club. We all want him to be brilliant/the new Harry Kane for England, but time may run out on the lad before he gets to realise his potential. Whatever, 3-0 Villa, despite their protests about the game brought forward …

And Antony hears something in the distance:

UTV. Hear that Yara? Listen carefully …. Squeaky bum time. In a season of massive games for us this is yet another. Enjoy the match.

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Villa playing Champions League football next season partly relies on results of teams around them. One of them is Chelsea, who host Manchester United at Stanford Bridge.

Rob Smyth will bring you all the updates from that game.

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Despite Tottenham’s make or break game of the season coming next week, Ange Postecoglou said he will “put out a team that hopefully gets the job done” against Aston Villa and “go out there to try to win the game.”

The head coach said tonight’s game could be a chance for his players to prove themselves for the final.

It’s an opportunity for them to put their name forward for the big game the following week because, as we have already seen in the past couple of weeks, as much as you would like to think there is an ideal starting line-up things happen and players have to be ready for that.

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Marcus Rashford is not involved tonight, as expected. The striker, on loan from Manchester United, has failed to recover from a hamstring injury he suffered last month. Rashford cannot play in Villa’s final game of the season at his parent club United on 25 May.

Rashford has made 17 appearances for Villa, scoring four goals, since joining from Old Trafford in February and earned an England recall in March after a 12-month absence. It is unlikely he will play for United again while Ruben Amorim is the head coach owing to a breakdown in their relationship. Another loan deal is an option. Villa have a £40m option to buy the player but his future remains unclear. Rashford has made clear he wants a Champions League club and is reluctant to join a team in London.

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In our 10 things to look out for this weekend Ben Fisher wrote that Aston Villa could use their “anger” and the rescheduling of this fixture to motivate them to a win. The Premier League agreed to bring forward Tottenham’s trip to Villa Park by 48 hours in order to help them prepare for a Europa League final (before they even reached said final).

The flipside to all of this is Villa can get on the front foot, kicking off 45 minutes before Chelsea entertain Manchester United and two days before Nottingham Forest head to West Ham and Arsenal host Newcastle. Victory for Villa could hoist them as high as fourth before a final-day trip to Old Trafford and, psychologically, that could prove a knockout blow.

Read more from Ben and the rest of our writers on what to keep an eye out for this weekend.

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Preamble

Hello and welcome to the penultimate matchday of the 2024-25 Premier League season. The champions have been decided. Those going back to the Championship have been decided. But second place, Champions League spots and qualification for next’s season’s Europa and Conference League still hang in the balance.

Aston Villa, who host Spurs tonight at Villa Park, have an outside chance of finishing second but they would need to win tonight and their final game of the season and hope several results go their way for that to happen.

Instead Unai Emery’s men will be targeting a finish in the top five which guarantees Champions League football next season. Only five points currently separate Arsenal in second and Villa in sixth. As things stand, Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle, Manchester City and Chelsea occupy the top five, but Villa along with Nottingham Forest are well-placed to capitalise on any slip ups.

As for Tottenham, full focus is understandably on the Europa League final against Manchester United. Ange Postecoglou’s side are a lowly 17th in the table and the manager will likely rest many of his starters tonight.

Join me for team news and buildup before the 7.30pm BST kick-off. And, as always, feel free to send me an email with your thoughts, questions, predictions, complaints and rituals. I want to hear it all!

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Son Heung-min has filed a complaint to South Korean police alleging he was the victim of a blackmail attempt, his agency said, after media reports that a woman had threatened the Tottenham Hotspur captain with a false pregnancy claim.

“The police are currently investigating, so we will let you know the results as soon as they are available,” his agency, Son & Football Limited, said. “We’d like to tell you that Son Heung-min is clearly the victim of this incident.”

Police had arrested a woman in her 20s and a man in his 40s, and were investigating allegations they tried to extort money from Son with the fake pregnancy claim, local media reported, citing police.

The Seoul Gangnam Police Station did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reports. Son, 32 is hugely popular in South Korea, not only for his success on the pitch in the Premier League but also for his dedication to the country’s national team as their captain.