Spurs look to turn up the heat on floundering Mourinho

ACROSS the top levels of Manchester United, they are currently backing Jose Mourinho to get everything back on track, but that hasn’t precluded some figures at board level naturally considering other possibilities.

And if this is to really turn into “a Mourinho season” — to use a phrase Antonio Conte has so mischievously managed to spread — there is no doubt who the club idealise as a replacement.

It is not Zinedine Zidane, even if they admire him. It is not Massimo Allegri, even though they’ve been monitoring his plans for some time.

It is of course the man Mourinho will face at Old Trafford on Monday: Tottenham Hotspur’s Mauricio Pochettino.

The Argentine would meet every requirement in the event of Mourinho leaving, from approach to team construction… except availability.

United are now so wary of having to negotiate with Daniel Levy, aware of the fact Pochettino himself wants to some day manage Real Madrid, and also conscious of his genuine desire to build a dynasty at Spurs; to do something very different and definitive there.

However, it is that very sense of ambition that also ensures this match has even more meaning than it would this early in the season, and even with United’s problems.

On the brink of a proper crisis, Mourinho’s side must dig in and consolidate, but Spurs have the chance — and pressure — to make life difficult for the home side and thereby make another leap.

In December 2016 and October 2017, a wobbling United had been talked down and surging Spurs so talked up, only for the home side to upend everything and grind out 1-0 wins. Those victories, however, just continued one trend Pochettino hasn’t yet been able to break.

The Argentine has been to Old Trafford four times and never once scored nor picked up a single point. Such meekness has been so marked, especially at a time when the side have been so magnificent almost everywhere else.

Spurs’ only points there in the last 12 years actual- ly came in the two seasons before his arrival — one 3-2 in 2012 inspired by Gareth Bale, another 2-1 in 2014 with David Moyes and Tim Sherwood as the managers — but those two wins were still preceded by six successive defeats.

It has meant Tottenham have lost more times at Old Trafford than any other club has lost at any other away ground in the Premier League era.

It is not just that United are again struggling or that they just lost to Brighton and Hove Albion. It is the manner of it all, as articulated by the comments of Leon Balogun following that 3-2.

“I said I had expected the Premier League to be quicker, but (the lads) told me this is always the kind of game you play against United. They like to slow it down a little bit sometimes. Liverpool is going to be completely different. I know how (Jürgen) Klopp likes to play. It’s going to be a lot quicker and a lot more intense.”

Spurs should be completely different too. The feeling about Old Trafford at Spurs has meant that there is always almost a shrugging acceptance of a certain meekness in their performances there, but it should not be accepted here. Not when teams so much lower than them like Brighton are talking like that. Now is the time to take command, to take the game to United, to press to an even greater level than Brighton and cause problems. There is real sense of opportunity there. There is a vulnerability that can be further exposed, that can surely be punished.

If United are now as slow as sides like Brighton have identified, what could a fully firing Spurs do to them? It should be