A wild ride took everyone back where they had started. The one certainty arising from an affair of low quality and, from nowhere, scarcely credible drama was that only a fool would hang their hat on Tottenham or Manchester United right now. The ignominies of last season may be at some remove but it remains anyone’s guess what either of these scratchy, neurotic sides will produce on a given occasion.
It briefly seemed they had conspired to hand Spurs a first league win on home turf since the opening day. That would have been a head-scratcher of its own given they were going nowhere until Mathys Tel, who had only been on the pitch for five minutes, offered a moment of incision they had barely signposted. When Richarlison glanced in Wilson Odobert’s shot early in added time it felt like a potential lift-off: Thomas Frank, so embattled in defeat to Chelsea last week, must have sensed as much as a largely sullen venue erupted around him.
Would that it were so simple. A minute shy of the extra seven, Bruno Fernandes swung in one last corner from the left. It arced beyond a desperately redeployed Senne Lammens, a packed Spurs defence and the majority of United’s cavalry; that was until Matthijs de Ligt, peeling around at the far post, met the delivery with a firm header and ensured United can still point to an encouraging uptick in form.
They had been so close to throwing it all away, fading badly in the final half hour. Their recidivist tendencies are yet to abate even if they are nowhere near as disaster-prone as in the earlier stages of Ruben Amorim’s reign. His substitutes could not offer the legs or cohesion that Frank’s replacements, some of which the home crowd audibly disapproved, eventually mustered and they still look some way short of producing regular 90-minute performances. Amorim’s admission afterwards that United dropped off through feeling too comfortable was mildly damning.
Nonetheless it still appeared for long periods that they would emerge with the points. Lammens had been worked twice in quick succession by Cristian Romero and João Palhinha, the first of those saves a superb diversion with his knee, before the hour mark but otherwise Tottenham had offered little threat until Tel’s leveller. Frank must have dreaded a decisive contribution from Bryan Mbeumo, his sure thing at Brentford, and the Cameroonian is in such fine nick that it felt inevitable.
Mbeumo had been deployed on the left and spent much of the opening exchanges trying unsuccessfully to stay onside. But he appeared on the end of a delicate Amad Diallo cross from the right, heading past Guglielmo Vicario under little pressure, after Spurs had twice made a mess of clearing their lines. He has now scored four goals in as many games; what Frank would give for an attacker in his vein of form and, for that matter, fitness.
Those at his disposal have often struggled. A more positive selection saw Randal Kolo Muani picked along with Richarlison, Xavi Simons and Brennan Johnson, but they rarely broke into song. It took the interval arrival of Odobert, probably their best player over the piece, to provide a measure of the balance and craft they required.
Odobert dovetailed well with Destiny Udogie, whose appearance in the 67th minute would bear fruit. It was Udogie’s centre that found Tel, who controlled and spun before blasting in a finish that snicked off De Ligt. Tel’s recent arrival had been booed, not so much through a personal slight as frustration that it meant sacrificing a generally frustrating Simons, but Frank was entitled to defend his changes later.
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There had been jeers for Richarlison, too, when he presented the ball straight to Diallo soon before Tel’s strike. But he sparked jubilation when Odobert cut in and unloaded a strike that, while on target, was probably not going in until supplemented with the slightest of flicks. He had earlier failed to work Lammens with Spurs’ only opportunity of the first half, completely fluffing a clear header from Johnson’s cross, and a first goal since 20 September clearly lifted a weight.
Whether a draw will have that effect for Tottenham remains unclear. They are still clawing around for an identity, although there were two teams on show who could say that. Inside the first minute De Ligt had aimed a short free-kick back towards Lammens only for the keeper to let it roll under his foot for a corner, which was promptly ballooned out of play. Frayed, flawed and frenetic: it was the way at either end of this game, so the exasperations and shoots of promise around both outfits keep flickering in equal measure.
