Greatest Of All Legends

Chapter 818: Tottenham Stained Red

With both Man Utd and Tottenham having lost their previous Premier League games, Tottenham against West Ham and United against Liverpool, the two teams had arranged their tactics to ensure that they wouldn’t lose again today.

For Solksjaer, it was a change in formation. He was playing a 5-3-2 formation that transitioned to a 3-5-2 when they were on the attack.

With the defensive trio of Maguire, Lindelof, and Varane as well as Shaw and Wan-Bissaka on the flanks, they didn’t plan to be beaten behind.

They addition of Mctominay and Fred who were pretty much box to box players, helping in defence and partnering with Bruno Fernandes who would help direct the attack by making sure the ball reached Ronaldo and Cavani in front, they hoped to get something from the game.

The Tottenham still arranged themselves in the 4-2-3-1 formation they had used in the last game, but there were some changes in the line-ups and some tweaks to the formation.

Lloris stood in goal, Romero and Dier were the two center backs while Emerson Royal and Davies were playing out wide from the back.

In defensive midfield positions were Hojberg and Skipp while in front of them was Lo Celso.

Up front were Son, Kane, and Moura as the front three.

On paper the two sides looked to be evenly matched and it remained to see who would get the upper hand as the game began.

It was Man United that looked like scoring first after the game began, with Wan Bissaka finding Cavani in Tottenaham’s 18-yard box in the eighth minute, but his shot was blocked by Dier before it could cause any trouble.

In the 24th minute, Tottenham got a direct freekick that Lo Celso tried to send towards goal, but it didn’t even make it past the wall.

However, it was quickly recycled by Moura who clipped it over the United defence for Son. Son controlled the ball with his first touch, but his second touch to send it towards goal ended up an errant touch that sent the ball over the bar.

Four minutes after, the Tottenham fans jumped off their seats in joy after Romero flicked home the ball from a corner, but the assistant referee held his flag up to indicate offside.

After a quick check with the VAR, the referee disallowed the goal as Romero was indeed offside.

That flattened out the excitement instantly, but the fans were a bit upbeat now that their team had shown some attacking prowess as they had been passive most times.

The offside goal had gotten the United side to react with more ferocity as after that moment, United began controlling then game, sending ball after ball forward and forcing their opponents back.

Tottenham defended well, but when there were top class passers like Bruno Fernandes, and world class strikers like Cavani and Ronaldo on a team, then conceding was just a matter of time.

Tottenham first got a scare in the 33rd minute when Fred thought it a good idea to send a homing rocket of a shot at goal from 30-yards out.

Lloris scrambled to make the save, excellently diving and pushing the ball off target, but that was only the beginning.

In the 39th minute, after keeping the pressure up with continuous efforts to break past the Tottenham defence, Bruno caught sight of Ronaldo’s poise to make a run.

Deciding to chip the ball over instead of finding space, Bruno sent a chipped pass into Tottenham’s penalty box.

Already between Tottenham defenders and prepared to make a run, Ronaldo was quick off his line and the first to reach the ball.

Amazing pace allowed him to reach the ball before it even touched the ground and exceptional flexibility and accuracy allowed him to rifle a shot at goal from the awkward angle, sending the ball under Lloris gloves and into the bottom left of the goal.

In the stands above the Tottenham bench, Jason winced as he watched Ronaldo hit the ball into his team’s net and covered his face, completely unaware that a camera was pointed at him.

As someone who had played with Ronaldo, the moment he saw Ronaldo bearing down on the ball, he knew. He could feel it. There was no way Lloris was reaching it.

Uncaring for the Tottenham fans who had been incensed by the goal, Ronaldo ran down the sidelines and jumped into a knee slide while the other United players joined him shortly after to celebrate the goal while the Tottenham fans watched uncomfortably.

The match continued shortly after. It had been delayed a little because a VAR check had been conducted due to how close Ronaldo had been to the offside line but they only confirmed that the goal had been inch perfect.

Despite going behind, Tottenham barely responded and though Lo Celso got one a chance from an Emerson Royal cross, he wasn’t able to bring the ball down enough and it flew over the bar.

In the second half of the game, the game started off with Tottenham getting a golden opportunity to equalize thanks to a mistake from De Gea.

A Man Utd goal kick had gone straight to Lucas Moura who squared the ball to Son, but Son’s impatience got the better of him and he curled the ball just wide of the post.

But after that things got flat with the Tottenham side mostly moving the ball around passively and they paid dearly for it when Ronaldo got through on goal and was found again by Fernandes before he he finished in some style.

Luckily for Tottenham, Ronaldo’s run wasn’t as perfect as his first goal and he was ever so slightly offside and this was discovered after a VAR check thus the goal was called off.

Less than another ten minutes later, United got through Tottenham’s defense once again with Fernandes moving the ball forward.

Ronaldo soon arrived on his right to support him while Cavani continued his run forward. Sending the ball to Ronaldo on the right, the defenders followed Ronaldo, but a back chop sent the ball back the other way, creating space and Ronaldo sent a perfect through ball between the space and into Cavani’s path.

Making his run past Lindelof, Cavani’s first touch pushed the ball to the right as he noted that Lloris had come running off his line.

As Lloris got close enough and dived towards the ball at his feet, Cavani chipped the ball cleverly over Lloris’s outstretched body and the ball landed behind him continuing past the goal line and into the back of the net.

At this point, the body language of the Tottenham fans was nothing to look at. They were fuming.

Their team’s performance had been flat and even after going one behind, the manager still made them play passive style football instead of throwing people forward.

Nuno didn’t know how close the fans were close to breaking and his next tactical decision was to bring on Ndombele to replace Skipp who hadn’t been up to par so far.

To be fair to the manager, it was a correct decision.

The team didn’t have any other player apart from Dele Alli on the bench, but Lo Celso who he would come on for was still playing pretty well and wasn’t exhausted.

However, the fans who already annoyed at losing and having to watch patient, defensive football... or what they would term as passive lost it when they saw the manager making what looked like a defensive substitution when their team was two nil down.

It started with scattered boos, but soon, the boos grew louder and even the United fans and the players had to take looks around the stadium to see whether Arsenal fans had snuck in to support them against Tottenham.

The Tottenham players who were already feeling down at being two goals behind only had their mood’s grow worse when they saw some of their fans openly booing them.

Going against the manager’s orders to stay patient and look for chances, the Tottenham players tried to force things, but the United fresh substitutes took advantage of that and soon Rashford burst away at the Tottenham goal with electrifying pace.

No one could even get near him as he entered the 18-yard box and calmly curled the ball around Hugo Lloris.

United immediately burst out celebrating their third goal, but the third goal was also the snapping point for the fans who were still trying to support the players.

They also joined in the booing and most of the boos were directed at the manager. The substitutes had to bear most of it as well, while the players on the pitch weren’t left out either.

The whole situation turned toxic while the game was still going on and Jason watched it all play out in disbelief, sure that some news reporters were already typing hard at their keyboards.