Tottenham and Man Utd are abject failures – and it’s obvious why | OneFootball

Towards the end of the transfer window, as poor results led to a growing sense of panic around Tottenham Hotspur, the club pushed for some unexpected deals. Some were so unexpected that the targets abruptly expressed no interest in going there. More than one player preferred a move to Aston Villa.

Manchester United aren’t at that point but they have found their sway isn’t what it was. Many under-23s, which is the age profile the club are now prioritising, have grown up with the club looking like a basketcase rather than frequent champions. One target's disinterest was described as “a low”.

That’s been the thing with this season for both clubs. As bad as it has got, it has always felt like a new nadir is just around the corner.

They come despite the clubs’ fixed places in the upper reaches of the Deloitte Football Money League. The latest edition actually dropped on 23 January, just after United had lost 3-1 to Brighton and Spurs had fallen 3-2 to Everton. Both were left entrenched in the bottom half of the table, and yet there they were in the top 10 of a list executives pore over. The latest figures show United had a revenue of around £640m for 2023-24, in fourth, and Spurs £513m, in ninth.

All that in a football world in which there is a 90 per cent correlation between wage bill and league position – it shouldn’t really be possible for them to be this bad. United and Spurs have become the anomalous 10 per cent, in terms of performance, as much as they are football’s 1 per cent in terms of wealth.

The evidence of the modern game is that such riches afford clubs safety nets, levels under which they cannot go. Only four years ago, both considered themselves so far above most of the game that they had designs on a Super League. Football comes at you fast. They’ve now fallen so fast they’ve burst through those safety nets.

This obviously isn’t just down to the figures or financial facts, either. Just look at the football. Even Spurs’ best XI, when it is used, is some way off the vibrancy of Mauricio Pochettino’s. Manchester United’s teamsheet, meanwhile, reminds you of Liverpool in the 2010-11 season, before their January acquisition of Luis Suarez. There are so few players capable of intimidating opposition teams – maybe just Bruno Fernandes and Amad Diallo at the moment – and so many who look like they just shouldn’t be at such a club.

It adds an element of sarcasm to this week’s “Super Sunday” at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a different sense of spectacle. This is the meeting of possibly the two most underperforming teams in Europe. Who knows what’s in store. On recent form, it’s unlikely to be high quality.

The strange part is that as caustic as these comments read, none of it is to blame players or coaches that much.

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Jonny Evans of Manchester United scores against Tottenham (Getty)

It may almost seem some kind of dark magic for both teams to be this bad, but there are plenty of logical reasons for it. The two clubs are facing perfect storms, in different ways.

With Spurs, Ange Postecoglou was right to say last weekend that any “objective analysis” has to start with the injuries. They've been too much to handle. The wider issue is how those absences have exposed macro and micro problems. Spurs are suffering from a long-term lack of elite investment in the squad. Their wages-to-turnover ratio is among the “healthiest” in football at 42 per cent, but that isn’t necessarily all that beneficial to the team, or, as a consequence, the business. The 2023-24 Deloitte figures show that Spurs paid over £100m less in wages than their erstwhile “big six” counterparts, and more than £30m less than Aston Villa. Little wonder more players fancy Unai Emery’s side.

Put bluntly, Champions League qualification would be a drastic overachievement. Spurs didn’t maximise their appearance in the 2019 final.

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Manchester United players react after conceding against Spurs in their Carabao Cup quarter-final defeat in December (Getty)

Manchester City £401m

Liverpool £378m

Manchester United £362m

Chelsea £330m

Arsenal £320m

Aston Villa £250m

Tottenham £217m

Newcastle £213m

West Ham £158m

*Euros converted to pounds

This lower spending has a greater cost when you miss your most valuable players, like Micky van de Ven. The more concerning question is whether Postecoglou’s approach has been a contributing factor in the injury crisis, rather than just a victim of it. Some around the club have already wondered about close-season changes to the medical staff. There is then the debate about Postecoglou’s tactics, and whether they are sophisticated enough for this level.

Such arguments have led to bristling about a perceived dismissiveness about his coaching background or that he had his best results in Scotland. It’s nothing to do with any of that. The Premier League is the strongest league in the world and football – for all its faults – is meritocratic. You prove yourself at the next level up or you drop down. The jury is still out on Postecoglou, especially given the unexpected proportion of losses. How he responds will be instructive.

Ruben Amorim is facing the same scrutiny, albeit at a far bigger club. United have gone past a tipping point, as years of excessive spending with minimal direction came to a limit. The wage bill stopped guaranteeing a certain level of quality. How could it when the club made decisions like boosting Antony’s £25,000-a-week wage at Ajax to a reported figure of at least £140,000? That’s how you become the anomalous 10 per cent. That’s how you end up with a woefully mismatched squad, and the club really needing to build from scratch.

The expenditure of the Erik ten Hag era, in particular, didn’t just set that squad back, it also set the club back, in terms of its inability to spend now.

Amorim can be criticised for individual decisions, but it’s hard for them to have too much meaning when Ineos have decided everything needs to be changed.

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Son Heung-min of Spurs celebrates a goal against Manchester Utd (Getty)

Perhaps the real moral of a match like this is what happens when clubs are primarily treated as businesses, even in a world as finance-dictated as football.

It is telling that, in contrast to most “big six” rivals, or even Brighton, neither club has implemented any guiding football ideology. There is no outlook that everything reverts back to, as illustrated by abrupt shifts in manager profiles. Too many major football decisions have been made by non-football people, who are better suited to business decisions.

All that makes it more incongruous that both clubs now have ideologues as coaches. Little wonder there’s a disconnect. Neither club has been structured to absolutely optimise sporting performance, at least not compared to rivals.

Many Spurs fans will of course be crying out for direct criticism of Daniel Levy, and United fans of the Glazers.

That is implicit in the above. And yet the structures are where there is also “opportunity”, as Sir Dave Brailsford constantly puts it. Tipping points do sometimes lead to moments of realisation.

The problems at both clubs are relatively obvious, even if the solutions are less so. Some executives from big-six rivals are defensive of Levy, and insist the project is “only halfway”. They’d point to stadium repayments, as Arsene Wenger did at Arsenal, and insist the “execution” on the football side just has to match the financial side.

The view on United, meanwhile, remains the same: they’re so big they will eventually self-correct, no matter how it happens.

It is certainly hard to see how it can get any worse. Then again, that’s been said a few times this season. Now we have Sunday.