Man United and Spurs send in the clowns for some riotously stupid Carabao slapstick
Lads, it’s Tottenham. But lads, it’s also Manchester United.
We don’t think we’re guilty of too much aftertiming to suggest that with this match you couldn’t ever really have asked for better ingredients if it was a bit of light-hearted Christmas knockabout nonsense you were after. Carabao. Thursday night. The Premier League’s two most determinedly unserious football clubs. Ange. Amorim. The delicious sense of living life on the edge that comes when there’s no VAR to get involved and spoil everyone’s fun.
But the truly wondrous thing about Spurs is that no matter how ridiculous you think they can be, they still retain the ability to surprise. To somehow raise the bar, and then walk right into it. And right now the only team more capable of matching Spurs’ freak than Man United is possibly Man City. Who Spurs have also beaten twice this season. Makes you think.
The first half of this mind-meltingly unserious 4-3 Spurs win seems both fairly sane and also about 300 years ago now, given what followed, but really all the signs were there if you cared to look. Spurs carried their customary live threat on the attack, specifically down the left where the rejuvenated and reintegrated Djed Spence and Son Heung-min had their fun while Dejan Kulusevski buzzed around with his now customary menace while showing once again that he is without really telling anyone simply become comfortably Tottenham’s best player.
United looked confused and confusing at the back, as they generally have under Ruben Amorim thus far with not one United defender having yet really given any significant indication that they understand what the number three actually even means. In attack, meanwhile, United did some nice things, got in some nice areas – especially in the acres of space Spurs apparently willingly left unoccupied behind Pedro Porro on the United left – and then did nothing with it.
It seemed at times in that first half that United’s best route to actually creating a clear sight of goal might be to just give the ball to Radu Dragusin on the edge of the Spurs box and then press him like f*ck. Which turned out to be uncomfortably true in the second half.
Spurs’ lead felt just about deserved, because they had looked more compelling in the final third, but flimsy because they looked so permanently vulnerable going the other way.
Their goal was smartly turned in by Dominic Solanke – whose record against Manchester United now reads five goals in his last four games – after what at the time looked like serious goalkeeping and defensive errors but now seem churlish to criticise. We will, though.
Pedro Porro’s long-range strike was hit well enough, but Altay Bayindir should have done better than parry it directly back into trouble. He can ask his defenders why Solanke was the only player alive to the possibility, though.
But a couple of hours later it barely registered. That second half is one of the most ridiculous things we’ve ever seen. On one hand, it kind of feels futile to even attempt to analyse what’s gone on. The temptation is to just write it off as a madness. But you can’t do that with these two teams. Especially Manchester United, but especially Tottenham. This was extreme, sure, but it’s not come from nowhere either.
For Spurs, this was a dizzying highlight reel of a game, crystallising and compressing their entire season’s work to date into one 90-minute morsel of madness. They started the second half magnificently.
They roared at United, who folded meekly in the face of Spurs’ irresistible attacking shapes. It was clown-car stuff from United, it really was.
The second goal came when they carved open far too easily by the old Son-Maddison overlap trick and a p*ss-weak attempt at a clearance from Lisandro Martinez, who has rarely looked shorter than he did in the first 15 minutes of that second half. Kulusevski gratefully swept it home.
The third goal was, if anything, even worse from United’s view. Spence’s ball over the top was perfectly weighted, Solanke’s run perfectly timed. But they were nothing extraordinary. There was nothing here that should have taken five defenders entirely out of the equation.
The sight of Martinez raising a little hand in desperate hope of an offside flag that wouldn’t come was already quite striking even before replays confirmed just how ragged the defensive line had been. It was a complete mess.
Spurs’ control at this time appeared absolute. The to and fro of the first half had gone, replaced by one-way traffic. Spurs were 3-0 up and cruising, the only apparent question to answer being just how many more times they would pick a path through the bruised and broken United defence.
And the sheer and utter totality of that dominance will have sent synapses firing at the back of the mind of any seasoned Spurs watcher.
Get ready, everybody. They’re about to do something stupid.
And sure enough, Fraser Forster’s fondue was almost ready.
Forster has, it should be noted, done a very respectable job since being forced to step up by Guglielmo Vicario’s injury. We know that Angeball does not come naturally to the big guy, but he’s given it a game old go and his shot-stopping has remained solid enough throughout what has at times been a traumatic run of games.
There, now we’ve said some nice stuff we can set about ripping him apart. Because that was one of the most complete and total headlosses ever seen. The fact the first goal came almost immediately after Forster had made his first save of the night only made it funnier, but really it’s the second goal that marks this out.
We all know how Spurs play. And it has to be acknowledged that a big part of what makes them work as an attacking team in games like this is the way they play out from the back. So one massive dropped bollock can kind of be explained away as inherent risk baked into a system that has also got you 3-0 up.
But you can’t then do something even worse five minutes later. What’s heartbreaking when you watch the replay is that as Archie Gray passes the ball back to Forster, you can see the Spurs keeper actually make a little ‘keep calm’ gesture with his hands. He’s determined not to rush. He’s absolutely going to make sure he shows us all he’s not been rattled by that first goal. His head is definitely still attached to his shoulders and absolutely not on Mars, look how composed he’s being here and oh f*** that’s Amad Diallo sprinting at him and he’s right there and oh.
The next 10 minutes were a hideous spectacle. Forster’s headloss had reached such dangerous levels that he was even making reluctant-five-a-side-keeper saves with his feet against shots from 30 yards. We’re not a Premier League goalkeeper so can’t be certain, but we don’t think it can be a good thing when your own fans are laughing at you behind your goal.
We don’t want to give Amorim and United too much credit here, given the nature of those two absurd goals, but they had improved after a triple change at 3-0 down.
Yet having done a bit of work and been given such huge generosity, it has to be said they weren’t great at 3-2. Spurs were gone at that point. Sure, it was Forster’s errors that had let United back in but Spurs were in bits all over the pitch. They weren’t looking like scoring a fourth goal themselves at this point.
You have to think that a better, more confident side than United, presses the matter home at that point against a team that must have had a familiar sinking feeling in front of a crowd that definitely had a familiar sinking feeling. But one Noussair Mazroui effort whipped just wide from an awkward angle apart, United didn’t really offer much.
It’s not like you felt Spurs were definitely going to hold on, but you certainly had the sense that it was more likely another error would lead to the equaliser than a moment of inspiration from the visitors.
Sure enough, another goalkeeping error did lead to the game’s sixth goal. But it was Bayindir again, swinging at air as Son Heung-min’s corner flashed straight in. He wanted a foul because he’s a goalkeeper, and the length of his protests did rather suggest he was unaware there was no VAR, which would be a fittingly stupid thing for a player to do in this most stupid of games.
Even that wasn’t enough nonsense. El Clownico still had more to offer with Jonny Evans heading home a corner to reduce the deficit again. Spurs somehow held on, having somehow managed to find a way to make scoring four goals and winning a cup quarter-final against Manchester United really quite embarrassing. There is now the very real prospect of a Tottenham-Newcastle final in this competition; we’re really not sure how both teams will conspire to somehow not win it in that scenario, but we must just not be thinking hard enough.
Before all that Spurs have got Liverpool – both in the league at the weekend and in this competition – and, honestly, who knows what might happen in those games. But we’ve seen enough football and enough Spurs to know that on Sunday Fraser Forster has every chance of being man of the match after a 90-minute Lev Yashin impersonation.