DRAINED OF BELIEF, UNITED SHOW THE DAMAGE INFLICTED BY THEIR OWN MANAGER

BELIEVE it or not there is more than one Premier League football manager who didn’t get all he wanted in the summer transfer window. But Mauricio Pochettino’s response to two months of disappointment has been to will his Tottenham players to three straight wins. Already his team are six points clear of Jose Mourinho and Manchester United and here last night the gap in direction, understanding and cohesion was written large across the green acres of Old Trafford. This was Pochettino’s first win here with Tottenham and indeed the first goals scored at Old Trafford by his team. There could have been more of them. While Mourinho has veered between simmering anger and familiar petulance these past few weeks, the Tottenham manager has kept his thoughts to himself after his club failed to bring him a single new player during the transfer window. You could argue that Pochettino’s team have spoken for him subsequently. So, indeed, have Mourinho’s for him, just by way of a totally different vocabulary. Here United were unfamiliar for half an hour in that they were lively, quick and full of energy. On TV, Gary Neville said he hadn’t seen a United team with as much speed for six years. That sounded an exaggeration but United could, indeed, have been ahead. The problems began when they didn’t score and when, inevitably, Tottenham began to find some possession either side of half-time. As Tottenham pressed — and then scored twice quickly — the damage recently inflicted on the United squad by their increasingly erratic manager became apparent. Confidence is crucial to all sportsmen and here, United’s slipped away like water down a drain. They lost by three, it could have been by five and when all is said and done it is hard not to contrast the work this year of the two managers. Pochettino has been upset this summer, too, but he has dealt with it in a different way. The Tottenham coach clearly feels that to speak too much publicly would have had a negative effect on the players he has. Mourinho sees it differently and at the moment only one approach is working, something that was spelled out clearly here in the performance of the two defences. Pochettino fielded two players he had hoped to move on during the summer. He no longer holds Toby Alderweireld or Danny Rose in particularly high regard, for differing reasons, but has said hardly a word about either presumably because he knew that one day soon they would have to do a job for him. That day arrived last night as both played and both were fundamental to this victory. Alderweireld in particular was magnificent, producing the kind of performance that helps to win games such as these. In the United ranks, meanwhile, there was only more defensive chaos and it appears whatever disease Eric Bailly and Victor Lindelof caught in the run-up to the defeat at Brighton has quickly been passed to

Chris Smalling and Phil Jones Mourinho made six changes for this game and the introduction of two defenders from the Sir Alex Ferguson era counted for two of them But Jones could have given away a penalty in the first half and then lost Harry Kane for the decisive first goal It wasn’t long before he was hauled off and Lindelof (right) sent on for further punishment And this is the thing with Mourinho at the moment: his trust in you disappears in an instant and every member of his team knows it Lindelof, predictably, was dreadful Had his backpass straight to the feet of Dele Alli resulted in a goal, we may never have seen the Swede at this club again As for Smalling, he hung on for dear life as central defensive partners came and went until, right at the end, he was made to look foolish by Lucas Moura and Spurs stole into the night with a bigger winning margin than they ever could have dreamed of The strange thing is that United were not all bad They could have scored two or three goals of their own and carried absolutely no luck whatsoever But they are a fragile bunch and that will get you in the end Who knows what Pochettino has been saying to his players privately since last season ended but it has clearly worked Spurs are not a club without their problems but crucially those issues are not making their way on to the field At United there is no such unity y or sense of common purpose It is a dressing room — indeed a club — that seems to have an every-man-for-himself mentality and that will only take you one way no matter what level of the game you are lucky enough to play Pochettino is a man who manages by design and with a clear sense of forethought Mourinho used to be like that, too These days he looks like he is humming a different tune every day and it never seems to be the right one