"Lads, It’s…"

Few online resources have been utilised as much as the pointing Spider-Man meme in recent times. Some things are indeed like another thing, so it really has been useful to get that point across. We may even see a footballing version at Old Trafford on Sunday when Tottenham visit. Is it possible to imagine Ole Gunnar Solskjaer reprising Alex Ferguson’s famous three-word pre-match team-talk “lads, it’s Tottenham”? Yes. Is it also possible to imagine Jose Mourinho pacing the away dressing room and saying “Lads, it’s Man Utd”, possibly adding something about balls? Also yes. Are Manchester United now the Tottenham Hotspur of the north? Well, they won the league you know, a while back.

This fixture last season was Mourinho’s first defeat in charge of Spurs, one of 11 so far and one of three to teams he has managed in the past. Home and away losses to Chelsea in December and February were more damaging and arguably more painful (given they came against the club who have sacked him twice even though he has managed them to 50% of their league titles) but that’s not to say the Spurs boss won’t be incredibly motivated for his latest trip to the Theatre of Dreams. Sliding Doors moments in football are frequent but this game has more than most. Mourinho, unless you were a Celtic/Martin O’Neill fan, burst into the British consciousness with his Old Trafford Champions League knee slide after Porto had knocked Manchester United out of the competition in 2004. That night, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had sat on the bench for the majority of the game but to who did Ferguson naturally turn to see the game out? That’s right, Cristiano Ronaldo, but the callow Portuguese lasted only a handful of minutes before picking up an injury that saw the substitute replaced by the people’s substitute, Solskjaer. The Norwegian would play only six more games for United in the Champions League. Ronaldo: a few more.

For his part, the current United boss famously came very close to joining Tottenham in 1998, a move that, again, would have shut some very important doors. The fax arranging the deal to send Solskjaer to White Hart Lane is apparently now in his possession and you feel that beating Tottenham might be important to the Norwegian in a way that it wasn’t for previous United bosses, especially considering who currently sports the largely purple apparel of the Spurs management team.

It's Spurs vs Man United tonight. You can't think of this fixture without reminiscing about the time Spurs threw away a 3-0 half time lead to lose 5-3 to Man United at White Hart Lane#TOTMUNpic.twitter.com/DYvnTFuw65

— Classic Football Shirts (@classicshirts) June 19, 2020

Some low-level sniping between the United and Tottenham bosses this week over League Cup stuff only adds to the feeling that this game is actually much bigger than it looks at first glance, which is already reasonably big. Statistically this game has had its moments in the Premier League era, from United’s comeback from 3-0 down to win 5-3 in 2001, to Pedro Mendes’ “it might have been just a couple of feet across the line” non-goal in 2005. The fact that Tottenham have lost 22 times at Old Trafford in the Premier League, a divisional record for an away team at a specific venue (and only 33 fewer than United have lost there themselves) is at the heart of Lads It’s Tottenham, and yet, and yet… is Mourinho turning it around at Tottenham?

Torturous handball debates aside, Tottenham really should have six points out of nine this season (losing only to champions elect Everton) and have navigated an endless route through the early rounds of the Carabao Cup and Europa League qualifiers to a quarter-final against Stoke and the group stage respectively. Harry Kane seems to be edging slowly into that state where he suddenly adds a lot of numbers to his numbers, and after Thursday night’s Europa League hat-trick, his 15th for the club, he has six goals and six assists for the season, the only Premier League player in goal involvement double figures in all competitions as it stands. A functional Kane is the sort of proper football totem that Mourinho needs in his teams, from Didier Drogba in his first spell at Chelsea all the way through to Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Manchester United. The Swede’s injury towards the end of Mourinho’s largely forgotten-but-successful season in charge of the club in 2016-17 was a critical moment in whether his United career worked out. Kane, plus Bale and Son at some point, gives Mourinho the heft he craves.

12 – Harry Kane has been directly involved in 12 goals (6 goals, 6 assists) in seven appearances for Spurs this season, four more than any other Premier League player in all competitions; Kane is averaging a goal or assist every 40 minutes so far this season. Indispensable. pic.twitter.com/1P5HEo6XsG

— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) October 2, 2020

For his part Solskjaer does not want to become the first Manchester United manager since Ron Atkinson in 1986 to lose his first two home league games of the season. Just like in 1986, the first two clubs to visit Old Trafford are from London (then: West Ham and Charlton, now: Crystal Palace and Tottenham), and back then heralded an autumn of woe that resulted in the manager being replaced by a man who would go on to rebuild and re-establish United as a major force. Solskjaer is no Big Ron (although the latter was commentating on the former when he did the important thing in 1999) but a defeat to Tottenham would put United on the back foot in the top four race already, especially with Carlo Ancelotti’s Everton emerging as a potential new entry. You get the feeling that, just like in 2004, Solskjaer wants no triumphalism from the visiting manager. Lads, it’s Mourinho.