When the board went up to signal nine minutes of added time, the thought was of what Manchester United could do in that period. Lads, it’s Tottenham, a team who in living memory threw away a 3-0 half-time lead against United to lose 5-3. After which, nothing. No surge, no siege, no sense of jeopardy. The game had been done even before Lisandro Martínez’s 83rd-minute own goal; for the final half-hour they offered nothing.
That, inevitably, shapes the perception. For the first hour, the game had ebbed and flowed. Chances here, mistakes there. In total there were 39 shots in the game – and yet by the final quarter, Spurs seemed comfortable. United probably had the better of the first half-hour, although all they had to show for it was a series of headers over the bar from players who may or may not have been offside. In the minutes after going behind, Antony hit a post and Casemiro had a header athletically tipped over by Guglielmo Vicario. The game could have taken a different path.
