Alex Keble analyses Tottenham Hotspur's 3-0 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford.
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This was a 3-0 victory for Tottenham Hotspur that could easily have been five or six and as good as Ange Postecoglou’s side were in an elegant first-half performance, an equally big story here was a bad display from the hosts.
Sky Sports' Gary Neville described it as “one of the worst performances I’ve seen in Ten Hag’s time."
Bruno Fernandes’ first-half red card might offer an excuse, but in truth Spurs should have been out of sight by the time United went down to 10 men.
In fact, Man Utd were better in the second half thanks to a more conservative set-up. But the damage had been done, making their efforts after the break redundant.
It will no doubt be a tough week ahead for Erik ten Hag, who has overseen the joint-worst start to a Man Utd season in Premier League history.
Kulusevski and Maddison lead scintillating Spurs first half
Spurs raced out of the blocks and tore Man Utd to shreds. By the end of the match they had accrued an Expected Goals (xG) of 4.67, the most Spurs have ever had in a Premier League match on record.
A lot of this was down to their furious hard-pressing, which in the first half alone led to Spurs winning possession seven times in the final third. Man Utd just couldn’t cope with the pressure, misplacing passes and ensuring Spurs had them pinned back.
But what they did on the ball was even more impressive, with Dejan Kulusevski magnificent in his new No 8 position alongside James Maddison.
Kulusevski created nine chances, which is more than any other visiting player at Old Trafford in Premier League history.
With Maddison often pulling wider to get on the ball early in a move, Spurs’ centre-backs easily passing through a haphazard United press (more on that below), and Destiny Udogie helping to crowd midfield, Kulusevski was able to find intelligent spaces between the lines to carve United open.
It was the electric performance Postecoglou needed, and a strong counter argument to suggestions his furious front-foot football needs taming.
Man Utd’s off-the-ball football played into Spurs’ hands
But as much as Spurs should be showered with praise, they were allowed to play this way by Man Utd.
The first major error was using a 4-4-2 formation with Kobbie Mainoo and Manuel Ugarte together in the middle.
Ten Hag has instructed his players to break as quickly and directly as possible, which inevitably means Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford pushing very high, turning the formation into a 4-2-4.
A 4-2-4 shape means a wide-open and under-stocked midfield, and sure enough this image of the team’s average positions reveals the enormous gap between defence and midfield, plus the huge space around those isolated midfielders.
Worse, Fernandes and Joshua Zirkzee appeared to press at almost random intervals.
As opposed to a collective press, ensuring compressed defensive lines and team-mates backing each other up, United would hound the ball all of a sudden, breaking the chain and leaving big patches of space open.
This happened all over the pitch. Here, ahead of Brennan Johnson hitting a post with the score 1-0, Noussair Mazraoui charges into a missed tackle on Udogie and then Matthijs de Ligt does the same on Timo Werner.
Both Mazraoui and De Ligt had poor matches, but for that we can blame an incoherent pressing structure.
Notice how there is no visible shape, big gaps between every player on the screen, and those two midfielders, circled in the image, have the majority of the pitch to cover on their own.
A stretched shape, elongated further by the pressing, explains how Kulusevski ran the show – and why Spurs' aggressive game consistently won out.
“The press was no good first half,” Ten Hag told Sky Sports after. But it would be wrong to simply reflect on this performance as a tactical issue.
Man Utd struggled even to pass the ball to one another.
Their passing accuracy was just 77.3 per cent in a first half defined by wayward touches and confused interactions.
It was, sadly, a familiar story: Man Utd were passive, timid, and defined by tactical disorganisation on and off the ball.
And the starkest example of all was Spurs' first goal; was a centre-back running through the entire team to set up a third-minute opener.
It certainly set the tone for a match that goes down as a bad day of the Ten Hag era.
