Manchester United have endured an indifferent start to the season following their loss to Brighton this past weekend where the side went down 3-2 to Chris Hughton’s impressive Seagulls outfit. This may not be coming as a surprise for United boss Jose Mourinho who spoke of a difficult season for the Red-Devils this campaign after the team did not land the players he felt United needed to sign in the summer.
After the opening day win over Leicester City, Mourinho was full of praise for captain Paul Pogba and with the reports of the divide between the two increasing it was surprising that the two men actually agreed on something as they both spoke of United having a poor attitude in the loss to Brighton.
United play their next game against top 4 rivals Tottenham Hotspur this coming Monday night and while Mourinho led his team to 2 wins and a loss against Mauricio Pochettino last season you will probably get decent Premier league betting odds on a United win given the atmosphere at the club at the moment.
Man United scraped to a narrow 1-0 win over Spurs at home in the Premier League last season while they lost 2-0 to Pochettino’s men at Wembley in the away fixture where they were totally outplayed and never looked like scoring.
United did make some amends though as Mourinho then guided his side to a 2-1 win over Spurs in the FA Cup semi-final which the Red-Devils ultimately lost to Chelsea in Antonio Conte’s last game in charge of Jose’s former club.
Spurs won their opening game of the season 2-1 away to Newcastle and followed that up with solid 3-1 home win over newly promoted Fulham leaving the Tottenham boss delighted with his team’s beginning to the season as the Argentinian manager had this to say as reported on the official Tottenham Hotspur website:
“It was an important victory. Winning games at home is so important and six points out of six this season is also important.
“I congratulate the players for an amazing performance. I’m very happy.”
Spurs may not have signed any new players this summer but they did secure Harry Kane to a new long term deal while they also signed manager Mauricio Pochettino to a long-term extension as well plus they did of course add Brazilian Lucas Moura in January who was over the moon to score his first Spurs goal against Fulham.
Harry Kane also broke his August scoring drought with a goal and Kieran Trippier added a fine free-kick goal to show that his World Cup form was not a fluke.
So United, who are still trying to recover their squad from an extensive injury list, will face a Tottenham team full of confidence and with the Spurs boss being talked about as the potential successor to Jose Mourinho the game will have even more significance with a “spicy” encounter highly probable.
Jose usually comes out fighting in these situations and he will hope new man Fred can produce a good performance if the criticism of his style of play is to be stemmed but the United boss will be focused on getting a win so we should not expect an expansive game from last year’s Premier League runners-up.
We are predicting a 2-1 United win with Mourinho rallying his troops after having over a full week of preparation time for the game.