Tottenham and Man United meet in the Disaster Bowl

When I planned this newsletter at the start of the week, I had the idea that I would try to find some silver linings in the downturns of Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United ahead of their matchup this weekend. I thought, perhaps, that I would find a reason to believe things aren’t so bad with one of them, or a clear reason to hypothesize that one team is better in the other.

Instead, everything I found is just incredibly grim. These teams stink, and they’re getting worse. United doesn’t have a coherent XI they can put on the pitch, and Ruben Amorim’s system simply does not fit most of the club’s most talented players. Ange Postecoglou’s system requires excellent fitness to work correctly, but his team is the most injured in world football.

If this game produces a loser, the losing fanbase is going to enter depths of despair that they haven’t seen since… the 1980s?

The stat splits for both teams from pre- and post-Amorim arrival are a crime scene. That international break isn’t the exact point where public sentiment shifted from “Tottenham are super unlucky” to “maybe Ange is part of the problem,” but it’s close enough, and lets us look at both teams in the same timeframe.

Before their injury crisis started, the Spurs attack was absolutely cooking. Genuinely in competition with Liverpool for best in the league. The loss of their top center backs, in particular, has affected everything — their ability to press and risk leaving their CBs isolated in physical duels, their build-up out of the back line, and their attacking set piece threat.

Early in the season, Spurs were among the most aggressive pressing teams in the Premier League. It both sparked their attack and made it difficult for opponents to get the ball forward. The death of Spurs’ pressing aggression and ability of their center backs to win physical duels has also had a cascading negative effect on every defensive metric. They give up a ton of shots now.

Spurs were missing an astonishing 11 senior players for their FA Cup match against Aston Villa, so I could very easily fill out a 3,000 word newsletter with comparisons between Spurs’ best players and their backups, highlighting how big the dropoff is. Since I’ve already mentioned the center backs twice and there are several positions on the pitch affected, I’ve picked out a different comp.

James Maddison, Tottenham’s best playmaker, has missed the last 3 league games. His replacement has been Yves Bissouma, a solid defensive player and respectable ball retainer, but not at all a playmaker. This is the kind of creative dropoff Spurs are experiencing in midfield with Maddison out of the lineup.

On the other side of this matchup is United, who didn’t have as far to fall from mid-November to now, but they’re managing a dropoff anyway. The squad was always going to experience some growing pains switching to Amorim’s 3-4-3 system, but they’re not even a meaningfully different team at the moment. Their attack is basically the same stylistically, just… a tiny bit worse.

The defense is the same thing. This is not all on Amorim — he didn’t buy these players, and a coach can only do so much to overcome poor squad construction — but there are no signs that he is fundamentally changing the way Manchester United play. They are the exact same team in a different shape.

There are some subtle differences in which players are performing decent or poorly, though, and some might be alarming for United management. Kobbie Mainoo, for instance, was improving as an all-around 8 under Erik ten Hag. In Amorim’s system, he has not only made fewer positive defensive contributions, but somehow also become a worse passer as he’s been granted a bit more freedom to roam forward. The club’s best young asset is getting worse, not improving.

These squads need total rebuilds. Like, a dozen players bought and sold each. They have both spent years pretending that they’re some internal improvement and one great move away from reaching their goals, and they can’t live in that delusion anymore.

I can’t wait to watch these two absolute messes face off. —KM

Occasionally, our gambling content is about why you shouldn’t gamble. It’s generally good advice, but it’s really good when the lines are bad and there’s a lot of injury uncertainty.

Over on the premium newsletter, Ted breaks down why he’s just not betting on a lot of the Premier League games this weekend. Picks are a component of the Variance Betting newsletter, but a more important component is teaching you how to identify games that you don’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole so you don’t lose a bunch of money.

Games we’re watching

Bayer Leverkusen vs. Bayern Munich — With draws in two of their last three matches, the title race appear to be slipping away from Leverkusen. They’re probably cooked without a win in this one.

Lazio vs. Napoli — The Serie A title race isn’t as wide open as it looked like it might be two months ago, with Napoli and Inter separating from the pack. But Lazio is still involved in a pretty crazy scrap for 4th.

Manchester City vs. Newcastle — While Spurs-United is very funny, this is likely to be both a higher quality game and one with bigger stakes. These teams have the exact same points and GD, and there’s a good chance one of them won’t make Champions League.

Villarreal vs. Valencia — Slim pickings in La Liga this weekend honestly, none of the good teams are playing each other. But Villarreal are always entertaining, and Valencia are much better than their standing in the table.

Toulouse vs. PSG — Similar deal in Ligue 1, so if you’re desperate to watch some French football, might as well watch the best players.

Stuff we’re reading

The degree to which people went in on Jim Ratcliffe this week was pretty astonishing.

Jacob Whitehead at The Athletic asks if INEOS is falling out of love with sport, given its serious financial issues and cutbacks.

Rob Draper at FootBiz eviscerated Manchester United management, and paints a picture of a club going nowhere fast.

The world of American SAWKER is pretty crazy at the moment, so they get their own section this week.

Seth Vertelney at Pro Soccer Wire on USL’s plans to launch a league that gets division 1 sanctioning and competes with MLS.

Graham Ruthven at The Guardian celebrates the new MLS rule that lets teams make regular cash transfers like out in the real world.

The absolute homies at American Soccer Analysis are doing previews of every team, and you can start with the first set here.

Rory Bryce at Football Heritage wrote about the experience of following a lower division Scottish team.

Eduin Boater Latimer at Analytics FC has run the numbers on this topic again, and for the millionth freaking time, a very tiny fraction of players are legitimately great finishers but everyone else regresses to the mean.

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