A wild ride took everyone back where they had started. The one certainty arising from an affair of low quality and, from nowhere, scarcely credible drama was that only a fool would hang their hat on Tottenham or Manchester United right now. The ignominies of last season may be at some remove but it remains anyone’s guess what either of these scratchy, neurotic sides will produce on a given occasion.
It briefly seemed they had conspired to hand Spurs a first league win on home turf since the opening day. That would have been a head-scratcher of its own given they were going nowhere until Mathys Tel, who had only been on the pitch for five minutes, offered a moment of incision they had barely signposted. When Richarlison glanced in Wilson Odobert’s shot early in added time it felt like a potential lift-off: Thomas Frank, so embattled in defeat to Chelsea last week, must have sensed as much as a largely sullen venue erupted around him.
