As I said, Manchester United and Spurs set the standard | OneFootball

I wrote something about Manchester United and Spurs just over a couple of weeks ago.

That was after I watched their game on the Saturday before the November international break.

Both teams were truly woeful, especially in the attacking half.

It simply reminded me that it was Manchester United and Spurs who were fighting it out last season to be fourth worst in the Premier League, lucky to have three even worse who would be relegated.

The end of last season proved comical. Spurs ‘won’ the battle to end up fourth bottom of the final 2024/25 Premier League table.

Whilst Spurs though did lift the Europa Cup, by beating Manchester United in the final!

That final summed up two things, just how bad both teams were last season, plus just how lucky they were that it had been the weakest ever Europa League competition, by some considerable distance. That largely due to the expanded 36 club Champions League and the fact that eight clubs no longer dropped from the Champions League into the Europa League after the group stage.

This Spurs v Manchester United match a couple of weeks ago ended 2-2, the subservient media predictably billed it as a thrilling Premier League clash. It was in reality a comedy or errors and a boring contest with minimal quality on show. Three late goals did inject some belated excitement but this was due to the inadequacies of the two sides, rather than quality.

They both spent serious money this summer, especially Man U, but any improvement for either side is marginal.

However, it had proved to be enough for the pair of them to stumble towards the upper end of the Premier League table ahead of this past weekend’s matches and if the pair of them had won, they would have been top six now.

Instead, Spurs were absolutely battered by Arsenal at the weekend. A very negative Tottenham side only had four touches of the ball in the opposition penalty area and were gifted their goal in the 4-1 derby defeat.

Manchester United were even worse last night!

Everton lost their captain to injury and went down to ten men due to a bizarre red card incident, yet despite playing for 8o minutes with a man advantage, Man U were absolutely shocking at Old Trafford, conceding to Everton and only towards the very end of the game did they manage to make Pickford save a couple. No wonder the vastly reduced remaining Man U fans in the stadium booed them off.

This for me is the standard, the Premier League standard Newcastle United will need to surpass to end up top six.

United don’t need to be better than Arsenal, they simply need to be better than the likes of Man U and Spurs to compete for a Champions League place.

Of course Newcastle need to pick up their Premier League form, especially away, build on that superb performance and win over Manchester City.

However, time and time again Eddie Howe has shown that once he gets his team into a groove, they can rack up an impressive run of results in the Premier League, as well as in the other competitions. As evidenced by five wins from six in the Champions League and Carabao Cup this season so far.

It is also now six wins in a row at home in all competitions and if winning at Marseille tonight, it would be eight wins for Newcastle from their last eleven games.