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Rick has emailed in with his view on the proposed change to the WSL format…

“The proposal to grow the WSL by adding teams each season by eliminating relegation to arrive at perhaps an 18 team top division by 2030 and a similar sized WSL 2 is all very well, but the main problem is the massive funding gap that has already opened up with Chelsea already having turned the WSL into a one team league.

“I’m afraid that women’s football is now mainly money driven and with that will come the professionalism aka cheating that has spoiled the men’s game.

“Unless a more radical restructuring is introduced to stop a small number of top clubs dominating the WSL financially then wishful thinking this can be avoided by reducing risk to investors is delusional.

“Has anyone had a look at what safeguards are in place to stop the wrong people buying in to women’s football?”

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Here is what some WSL managers had to say about the proposed scrapping of relegation…

Robert Vilahamn: “I definitely want to have a relegation battle. You need competition up and down in the table. If it’s for one or two years to make sure we can have a big investment in those teams, show me the case, what they think about it and then we can listen. I think the fans want to see games where you compete up and down in the leagues.”

Gareth Taylor: “I have always had this thing of potentially making the league bigger, more teams, 14, 16 teams I think it would change a lot, would create more competition within it. On first visual of looking at that piece this morning around no relegation, I can completely understand the reasons why, because it allows stability a little bit for those clubs to invest and create more competition. There’s positive and negative to both things. I think sometimes I’ve always been about keeping it simple. I think promotion and relegation are always going to be what supporters and teams play for and crave. I think that really is going to be difficult to move away from that.”

Renee Slegers: “I think there’s a reason why most competitions work like that in different countries, because you want to have that competitive element. But at the same time, the decision makers on this have more detail and more knowledge. I understand that there needs to be a foundation and levels of professionalism to be able to provide the quality that we need in women’s football.”

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Preamble

What a week it’s been in women’s football.

From managerial incomings and outgoings to proposed format changes that would alter the pyramid completely, it feels like we’ve seen it all. We’ll talk about those things a bit later, but for now the focus is on today’s six Women’s Super League fixtures.

To kick things off, Manchester United host Leicester City at Leigh Sports Village. Then, Aston Villa take on Everton while Tottenham face Manchester City. Brighton go head-to-head with league leaders Chelsea before Arsenal meet West Ham for a London Derby this evening.

Perhaps the most interesting fixture of the day, however, is Crystal Palace vs Liverpool. Both clubs sacked their respective managers earlier this week, which came as a huge shock to fans. While Liverpool are yet to find a permanent successor to Matt Beard, Norwegian coach Leif Smerud has replaced Laura Kaminski at Palace. The question is - will the London side get that ‘new manager bounce’ this afternoon?

Join me!

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For 45 minutes, it was tempting to wonder where this version of Manchester City had been hiding? They were energetic and incisive, threatening to tear Tottenham apart. Erling Haaland was back in the line-up after a knee injury and his 20th goal of the Premier League season – and 28th overall – was scant reward for their control.

City’s previous visit to this stadium had brought a Carabao Cup exit and it is remarkable to consider how they have fared since then. Before kick-off here and taking in that defeat, their record showed 14 losses in 27 matches in all competitions. They looked set to make a more coherent statement.

Then the second half happened and we were reminded of why City have sunk so far. The conviction evaporated in the face of Spurs showing plenty of it themselves and an equaliser looked on. Ange Postecoglou’s team were a different entity, pressing hard and they had the chances.

They could not get one to go in, the big one coming right at the end – 98 minutes on the clock, four more than the board had shown. That was because of a lengthy VAR check for what would have been 2-0 for City, Haaland eventually denied a second goal for handball.

Spurs went straight up the other end and when Pedro Porro crossed and the ball was flicked on, there was the substitute, Pape Sarr. He could not get his body into position and he sent the header high. City could exhale.

City were in the mood at the outset. They bristled with attacking intent, Guardiola starting Omar Marmoush up alongside Haaland. Jérémy Doku and Savinho brought their threat from wide areas. All four were involved in the breakthrough goal and it had been coming, Haaland having swiped at a chance moments earlier from a Matheus Nunes pull-back.

Marmoush has looked the part since his arrival from Eintracht Frankfurt, his touches and sharp turns easy on the eye. There was more from him here. He got City moving when he rolled away from Kevin Danso and Savinho found Haaland, who went left to Doku. Haaland made for the middle and when Doku, having teased Porro – not for the last time – crossed low, the ball deflected and fell for the City No 9. He was close in. It was simple.

Did Postecoglou have one eye on the first leg of next Thursday’s Europa League last-16 tie at AZ Alkmaar? He started with Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski on the bench; attackers with good scoring records against City. They have played an awful lot of football lately.

City were dominant in the first half. They poured forward at pace and from all angles. When Nunes stepped up from right-back into midfield alongside Mateo Kovacic, it allowed Nico González to push higher in a left central position. Outside him, Doku was electric. The Belgian had served notice of his intent in the early running, giving Porro a headstart in a race for the ball, getting there and winning the shoulder-to-shoulder challenge. The cross for Haaland came to nothing but he kept on coming, chills down spines in the South Stand when he ran with the ball.

Doku jinked inside before working Guglielmo Vicario while he teed up Savinho for a glorious chance; his teammate’s first-time finish was high and wasteful. There was also the moment on the half-hour when he set up Haaland, who shot too close to Vicario. It was a big chance. Savinho blazed into space up the right, cut inside and saw Danso block his shot. The game could have been over well before the interval.

There were boos from the home fans upon the half-time whistle. It is virtually a tradition when their team is behind. They had seen precious little, save for a looping Danso header that Ederson tipped over. From the corner, James Maddison tried to work it short only for Doku to intercept and set off yet again. Nunes overhit the final pass with Marmoush and Haaland free to his left. It was another let-off for Spurs.

Spurs brought greater intensity upon the second-half restart and the crowd responded. Maddison had flickered on the ball in the first period. Now he drove his team, although he was booked for a horrible tactical foul; he practically rugby-tackled Savinho to stop the break.

When Porro whipped over a cross after some Maddison promptings, Wilson Odobert could not stretch enough at the far post. Spurs had other moments, half-chances, including for Danso and Rodrigo Bentancur on set pieces. And some clearer ones. The transformation was remarkable. Now it was Spurs pouring forward. City wobbled. When Destiny Udogie robbed Savinho and raced upfield, he was so close to setting up Mathys Tel. Postecoglou made changes, Son and Dejan Kulusevski among those to come on – the latter playing in the No 9 role for a time. Djed Spence also came on. He set up another replacement, Sarr, who could not finish.

Spurs had a huge chance when the substitute, Brennan Johnson, got away up the right to cross for Son, whose shot was well saved by Ederson. The additional minutes brought drama but nothing for the home team.

Preamble

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to what is a bit of a viewing dream/nightmare. These are some juicy fixtures, so it’s a bit of a shame that they’re all kicking off at the same time. But it also makes for a fun clockwatch.

Here’s what we’ve got, all starting at 7.30pm GMT:

Brentford v Everton

Manchester United v Ipswich

Nottingham Forest v Arsenal

Tottenham v Manchester City

It’s Forest-Arsenal that has most of my attention, third v second, a real possibility there of Liverpool extending their lead to 14 points by the end of the night. Will David Moyes’ transformed Everton keep up their unbeaten streak? Is Kieran McKenna going to make things even worse at his old club? Can Spurs beat City for the third time this season? I’ll keep track of it all.

Drop me a line with your hopes, fears, dreams, whatever you fancy. Here’s to goals, goals, goals and goals.

Red Djed Redemption. Return of the Djedi. The Walking Djed. Call it what you like but, in a season of few success stories at Tottenham, Djed Spence’s emergence as a key player is the feelgood story of the campaign. He even scored his first goal in the Premier League at the weekend.

“A kid who had the wildest dreams to play in the Premier League. A kid who had the wildest dreams to score in the Premier League. That dream came true. Never stop believing,” wrote Spence on Instagram after Tottenham’s 4-1 win against Ipswich at Portman Road. Given the first two years of his time at Spurs, that dream did not seem likely to come true this season.

Ange Postecoglou admits he was unconvinced by Spence earlier this season so tested him to see if he would show the right attitude. “I didn’t make it easy for him,” said the Tottenham manager last week. “It’s not like I said to him: ‘Djed, you’re here, we love you, stay.’ I purposefully made it difficult for him – to see, when he wasn’t playing or part of squads, how he was training and reacting to things.

“He was always engaged and that made an impression on everyone – me, the coaches, his teammates – and from then on, it’s just been all about him. All I did was say: ‘You’ve earned a shot at it, here it is.’ He’s been brilliant. The penny drops at different times for different players. He’s an outstanding player. I’m super pleased we’ve still got him. The credit lies with him and the beneficiaries are us, the football club, but for him the challenge now is: don’t settle for that, push on. He can be a top, top player.”

Spence joined Tottenham in the summer of 2022 on the back of a standout season on loan with Nottingham Forest in the Championship, where he proved hugely influential as they won the playoffs and earned promotion back to the top flight. Spence made 46 appearances for Forest that season, earning a call-up to the England Under-21s in the process. Spurs paid Middlesbrough £20m for Spence and handed him a five-year deal, so it looked like he would play as a wing-back for Antonio Conte. It did not work out like that; he would have to wait more than two years to start a game for the club.

In a season that promised much but ultimately delivered little, neither Spence nor Conte saw out the campaign at the club. The manager left in March 2023 but not before he damned Spence with the faint praise of being a “signing the club wanted” and sent him on loan to Rennes. With Pedro Porro arriving from Sporting as Spence left for France, it looked as if his days at Spurs were numbered.

For 18 months, Spence was lost in the wilderness and seemed destined for the journeyman lifestyle. Loan spells at Leeds and Genoa failed to have the desired effect. The Italian side were prepared to sign him permanently but did not offer Spurs enough money to secure a deal. It was a sliding doors moment for both player and club. In the weeks and months since, he has gone from disposable to indispensable.

With Spurs suffering a raft of injuries across their backline, Spence was given his chance. He made his first start for the club in the 5-0 win at Southampton in December, starting at right-back before moving to left-back due to injury to Destiny Udogie. He provided the assist for James Maddison’s opener after just 36 seconds. It was the moment he, and supporters, had been waiting for.

Spence has now started nine of Spurs’ last 11 league games, only missing the draw with Wolves due to suspension and the 2-1 loss to Leicester due to injury. Spurs might have won both had he been available, such has been his impact. He has also proven versatile – he even helped out at centre-back for 45 minutes against Newcastle at the turn of the year.

What stands out about the 24-year-old is his desire to get the ball at his feet and attack opponents, a quality that has been missing among Spurs players this season. Injuries have not helped, of course, but Spurs have lacked a player who is willing to take on defenders. He has completed 2.5 successful dribbles per 90 minutes, the most of any defender in the league and the 12th highest of all regular players.

He’s a forward-thinking full-back who helps Spurs transition quickly from defence to attack. Considering only Liverpool (12) have scored more counterattacking goals than Spurs (10) in the league this season, it’s a vital trait. Spence offers a crucial alternative to the other full-backs at Postecoglou’s disposal. Whereas Porro’s best quality is his desire to get the ball into the box to create chances for teammates, and Udogie is a crucial physical presence in the final third who allows for quick turnovers in attack, Spence uses his speed on the ball to take on opponents.

Spence’s end product isn’t perhaps at Porro’s level, but he brings a similar combativeness as Udogie. His tackle success rate is 90.6%​ – ​of the 223 players who have attempted 35 or more tackles in the league this season, only Wolves​ player Toti Gomes​ has won a higher percentage of his challenges (93%). Spence’s tackling combined with the ease with which he can ghost past opponents means he offers something different. Ian Wright’s recent description of Spence as “swashbuckling” is apt.

Spurs welcome Manchester City to north London on Wednesday night on a run of three straight wins. Earlier in the season Postecoglou would have been reluctant to pick Spence against the defending champions. However, he is now the player driving the team forwards.

It was a measure of Ange Postecoglou’s frustration, of his despair, that he said on more than one occasion that the journalists who cover Tottenham could join in with training and not look out of place. Just when the fans thought they had hit rock bottom, eh?

The manager’s point was that his injury-ravaged squad was not really training at all and the situation was very much a live one up to the FA Cup defeat at Aston Villa on 9 February. They were simply shadow boxing in between the matches, which came thick and fast – there had been only one midweek without a game since the November international break. Postecoglou’s absentees were sometimes in double digits and he worried about pushing those still standing too hard.

To listen to Postecoglou now, as he looked forward to the Premier League visit of Manchester City on Wednesday night, was to hear somebody who had emerged from a nightmare. If plenty of the walking wounded are back, with others on the way, then so too is Postecoglou’s optimism. Post-Villa, there have been two clear midweeks and two league wins against Manchester United (home) and Ipswich (away). Before that, results were poor for a prolonged period.

Postecoglou has had the right numbers in training, no longer needing to make them up by calling across to the youth team. And, crucially, he has had the right intensity. One of Postecoglou’s basic requirements is that his sessions mimic the conditions of a match. For so long, it was not possible. Now it is. At last, Postecoglou feels he has a basis.

“When you’re going through that period of so many games and with the small squad because of our injury situation, we couldn’t really train,” he said. “You want to rectify things and the best place to rectify things is on the training track and we just couldn’t do it. You try to replicate it [a match] but at a really low tempo and it wasn’t realistic. Whereas now …

“We saw the benefits in the Ipswich game. I think that’s as fluent as we’ve been in the middle‑to-front third in terms of our football and it’s because we did so much work leading up to it during the week. The players were able to train. It’s also that we’d got players back. We’re not training with the young players from our academy. We’re actually training as a squad, which again means the level is really good.”

Postecoglou joked that he would love to restart doing some double sessions. He was joking, wasn’t he? What he made plain was that he had to balance the needs of the recently returned players, those who are champing at the bit to work, and the ones who have been through the wringer. It was significant to hear him agree that the intensity of the training was back at the top level.

“Yeah, but not just intensity,” Postecoglou said. “The kind of match [replication] work that we’ve been able to do that we’ve had to steer away from because we had to protect the players. You try to simulate match conditions so players can find solutions in those areas. You can’t do that when you try to protect them from the physical load. And it’s also the quality of players we had.

“Now we can work on our patterns, whether that’s in an attacking sense or defensive sense in match-like situations and at a match tempo, [albeit] not for the duration. The players would much rather feel like they’ve had a good session rather than go out there knowing they’re going to have to hold things back because there’s another game in a day’s time.”

After City, Spurs do not play again until next Thursday when they go to the Netherlands to face AZ Alkmaar in the first leg of their Europa League last-16 tie. There will be more time for proper work on the training pitch. After that, they host Bournemouth in the league on the Sunday before playing the second leg against AZ on the Thursday that follows.

Postecoglou has welcomed back Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, James Maddison, Brennan Johnson and Wilson Odobert. Timo Werner is also back to fitness; he was just not named in the squad at Ipswich. What everybody wants to know is when Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven and Dominic Solanke will return.

“The first European game … I’d say there’s [only] an outside chance for any of the three of them but certainly they’ll be back training fully by then,” Postecoglou said. “Then we’ve got Bournemouth and I reckon much better odds for that. And, definitely, by the second European game they should all be available to play.

“Dom’s the only one where we’ve got to be careful because he’s ahead of schedule so I don’t want to push that in case we need to pull the reins in a bit. But with Romero and Van de Ven that’s the plan.”

Radu Dragusin and Richarlison are longer-term casualties and Ben Davies will not play against City as he manages a knock. It says a lot that Postecoglou no longer has to press him into service.

It has been a strange season for Spurs, one of the quirks being that they have the opportunity to beat City for the third time, having done so in the league and Carabao Cup. They have scored more league goals than City (53 to 52) and have the same +15 goal difference. To Postecoglou, they are good indicators. He wants rather more.

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Some afternoons come like a kick in the teeth. Not only did Ipswich suffer a fourth successive home defeat in a game that never felt as one-sided as the scoreline ultimately suggested but fourth-bottom Wolves inflicted on Bournemouth only their second defeat in 16. After weeks of bubbling along in touch with the last safe spot, Ipswich find themselves five points adrift and survival is becoming an ever more distant prospect.

There was no sense in which this was an undeserved win for Spurs, some sort of smash-and‑grab to offend notions of dignity and propriety, but equally it was not entirely convincing. Not for the first time this season, there was a feeling that if only Ipswich had been able to seize their opportunity, it might have been very different.

“I’m really frustrated by the result,” said Kieran McKenna, the Ipswich manager. “We’re at the stage of the season when you’d like the points but we can ‘t lose patience with the good things that are going on. We started really well; we should have been ahead. That’s a couple of home games in a row we should go in with a lead and we go in with a deficit. Their execution whenever they got their big moments around our box was better than our execution and that was the difference.”

For five minutes there was only one team in it as Liam Delap tore at Archie Gray, creating two good chances and heading a free-kick against the post. But the opportunities passed, Tottenham rallied and Ipswich fell behind.

Gray had, unusually, been deployed as the right-sided of the two central defenders, and that helped create the angle for him to pick out Son Heung-min with a glorious long diagonal. Faced by Ben Godfrey and Dara O’Shea, Son jinked both ways to create room for a low cross that Brennan Johnson turned in for his eighth goal of the season.

Eight minutes later, Johnson, making his first start in a little over a month after recovering from a calf injury, had another. His was rarely the first name mentioned in discussions of the Spurs winter injury crisis, but his movement and instincts have been missed.

Son, again, was the provider, slipped through this time by Rodrigo Bentancur. It would be premature to say the South Korean is back to his best, but he made the most of being up against a full-back as heavy-footed as Godfrey, who was withdrawn at half-time.

As McKenna pointed out, as he lamented the way the margins have gone against Ipswich this season, Godfrey was only playing because of Axel Tuanzebe’s harsh red card last week. The sense of misfortune as compounded as both central midfielders were forced off: Jens Cajuste after turning his ankle and Kalvin Phillips with a calf problem.

There is no side in the country, though, who inspire less confidence with a two-goal lead than Tottenham, who led 2-0 against both Brighton and Chelsea and lost. For a time after Omari Hutchinson had swept in Jack Clarke’s first-time pass, Ipswich had hope – but the truth is they are simply not good enough defensively. Any team who concedes at over two goals a game is going to struggle.

James Maddison’s quick feet set up Djed Spence to fire in his first league goal via a deflection off Luke Woolfenden to make the game safe after 77 minutes, and Dejan Kulusevski bent in a fourth seven minutes later. Ipswich protested that Jacob Greaves was down after a minor clash of heads with Dane Scarlett but, while they may have had a point, that was not why they lost.

Spurs have little to play for in the league, but at least the sense is of the gloom dissipating, and of players and energy returning as they try to ready themselves for the challenge of AZ Alkmaar in the Europa League. “We’ve benefited from a couple of midweeks off,” said Ange Postecoglou. “I thought we did the hard things very well. We lost a bit of concentration in the first half but our front-third play was exciting and clinical. Sonny was unplayable in the first half and it’s good to get Brennan back.”

Ipswich, meanwhile, for all McKenna vowed to keep on fighting, should probably start preparing for a return to the Championship.

MADD MEN

The last time Tottenham Hotspur fans organised an official protest to voice their contempt for the manner in which Daniel Levy is running their club they occupied 11th place in the top flight and were still fighting on three other fronts. A few months, two predictable cup exits and with their team in freefall down the Premier League they decided it was time to highlight their displeasure again. While Football Daily has long questioned the effectiveness of the kind of protests that involve people walking from a pub they were almost certainly going to be in anyway to a stadium they were already planning to attend, Sunday’s march did at least serve to raise awareness of the frustrations that come with being a high-spending fan who unconditionally loves a football club that doesn’t love you back. And while it is almost certainly fair to say that Levy was already under no illusions about the low regard in which he is held by most Spurs supporters, news of the protest did at least spook club suits into sending out a pre-emptive email containing the usual bland and detail-free platitudes about “the need to be united”, etc and so on.

While fans are well within their rights to feel aggrieved by Levy’s apparent determination to provide them with whom they view as lemonade footballers on a budget that really ought to stretch to the finest champagne, at least they can have no quibbles about the opulence of the cathedral in which they regularly convene to cheer on (or lament) the trophy-dodgers who habitually line up for their team instead. And while it must be infuriating for them that, in terms of peak performance, Beyoncé remains the benchmark since the magnificent Tottenham Stadium first threw open its doors, at least on Sunday Spurs got to welcome opposition whose club is even more of a bin fire, with even more unlikable owners and whose once great stadium is now a complete dump. In a match that was in direct contravention of its Sky Sports Super Sunday billing, Spurs took advantage of extremely profligate Manchester United finishing to take all three points, their winner coming from James Maddison, one of the five players to return from knack that unsurprisingly improved their team.

While it would be naive for anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Tottenham’s work to read too much into this victory until we see if they can escape from Ipswich without blunderbussing themselves in both feet later this week, Ange Postecoglou was visibly relieved by his tactically inflexible team’s win, lifting them up from 15th in the table. In stark contrast, Ruben Amorim, his even more stubborn opposite number, spent the closing stages of the game hunched over in his touchline seat staring mournfully at the floor as they assumed the position. Having been the subject of criticism bordering on outright mockery by Roy Keane in the build-up to this match, Maddison’s celebratory “shush” to the cameras following his uncontested tap-in was widely interpreted and subsequently confirmed as a genuinely amusing riposte. Sadly, Keane wasn’t in London to give his thoughts on the matter, presumably because he was busy polishing his vast collection of medals at home.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I think with Bellingham’s red card, [the referee] didn’t understand the English well … I don’t think it’s something offensive” – yes, it’s the big semantical discourse of the weekend: Jude Bellingham getting sent off for effing and jeffing during Real Madrid’s 1-1 draw at Osasuna. “He said ‘[eff] off’, not ‘[eff] you’ – that’s way different,” added the Italian, although that didn’t stop Hansi Flick, from old rivals Barça, wading in. “It is disrespectful, but I’m not the one who should comment on it,” tooted Flick, commenting on it. “That’s what I’ve always told the players. Why waste time and energy arguing with the referee regarding the decisions he makes?”

Mikel Arteta started Mikel Merino on the bench for Arsenal’s match at Leicester. After 69 minutes he brought the midfielder on to play in attack and Merino scored the goals to secure victory. Was this woolly thinking on Arteta’s part?” – Ed Coutts.

Re: Noble Francis’s evidently prize-worthy letter in which he quotes Tom Lehrer (Friday’s Football Daily letters), I would like to be among the 1,057 Tom Lehrer aficionados who consume your semi-humorous daily missive to point out that, while the man is certainly ‘great’, it may come as somewhat of a surprise to the 96-year-old to learn that he is ‘late’” – Mick O’Regan (and 1,056 other Tom Lehrer aficionados).

Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Ed Coutts! Terms and conditions for our competitions – when we have them – can be viewed here.

Ruben Amorim has insisted that he will “stick with my beliefs” after watching his injury-hit Manchester United side endure a 12th Premier League defeat of the campaign that leaves them 15th in the table.

A first-half goal from James Maddison, who celebrated by putting his finger to his lips in response to criticism he received last week from Roy Keane, sealed Tottenham’s first win at home in the Premier League since they beat Aston Villa here in November. On his return from injury, Guglielmo Vicario produced a brilliant save to deny an Alejandro Garnacho shot in the second half.

It meant that United have now lost the most times after 25 games since they were relegated in 1974, with only 12 points separating them from the bottom three. But while Amorim refused to criticise his side’s efforts after Kobbie Mainoo, Manuel Ugarte and Amad Diallo were all ruled out with injury, he acknowledged that results must improve quickly.

“You grow and you learn a lot of things. We just need to face it and not run away, that is my feeling,” the United manager said.

“Today will hurt, it is a tough pain to lose so many games, but then you can change things in a week. I have a lot of problems, my job is so, so hard here. But I stick with my beliefs. We need to stop focusing on the big picture. Just focus on the next game. Let’s do everything to finish the season well and then think about the big picture. That is our goal. In this moment it’s about not even looking at the table or the schedule. That is my part.”

The defender Victor Lindelöf was the only substitute on United’s bench who had made a first‑team appearance and Amorim admitted losing three key players had not been ideal preparation. “At the beginning of this week we tried to train but day by day we were losing players. I don’t want to use that as an excuse because a lot of teams are suffering like that. Sometimes you have to face up to the challenge.”

More than 1,000 Spurs supporters gathered before kick-off in a protest against the chairman, Daniel Levy, that was organised by the Change for Tottenham action group. But while some remained after the full-time whistle to take part in a planned sit‑in protest, the numbers were significantly reduced.

“I thought the fans were great and they got behind the team. They contributed to us getting the result we needed,” said Ange Postecoglou, whose side have now moved up to 12th.

“It’s unacceptable that we are in the position that we are but the circumstances have dictated that. Today was an important game if we are going to start that process of improving. We certainly feel that we have an opportunity to climb up the table.”

Maddison admitted that he had used criticism from Keane as motivation after the former United captain questioned his ability to revive Tottenham’s fortunes and said that “he got relegated with Leicester and he’ll get relegated with Spurs”.

“I hope there’s a certain few that enjoyed me being the match-winner today,” Maddison told Sky Sports. “There was a little bit of outside noise this week. People will have their opinions. No one is more critical of me than myself. The gaffer prefers when we are in our own bubble, but it’s difficult with social media, you see this stuff.

“To be fair to the boys who’ve been fit all season, we don’t want to make excuses, but the last few months have been really difficult. These lads who have relentlessly been going every three days, it’s nice to be an injured player coming back to take the pressure off them.”

There was a gripping moment before kickoff outside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as the Levy Out supporters’ march reached its final stop and a single protester stationed himself in its path holding up a Levy In sign, Tiananmen Square-style, a lone show of human will in the path of history.

The sign was snatched from his hand. But wait! He pulled out another one. A minor scuffle ensued. Police intervened. The marchers cheered, then milled off to their high-priced seats inside this spectacular mega-drome, monument to Levy’s commercial brilliance, there to watch their team take on Manchester United, the great ailing zombified giant of English football.

That energy outside the ground was visceral and entirely real, as it was inside where the travelling United fans chanted, as they always do, for the Glazers to go, which is also prima facie an excellent idea.

In the buildup, this game was cast as a kind of Jeremy Kyle Clásico, football as a daytime TV-style theatre of dysfunction, grudges and grievances on show, familial poison to be let. You half expected to see gum-chewing bouncers at the edge of the pitch, cutaway reaction shots to stunned members of the crowd, a scoundrel nephew swaggering on stage halfway through.

In the event the reaction of both sets of supporters felt like an entirely reasonable note of resistance and dissent. These two football clubs often seem to be asking the same question these days. What does this sport mean now? Who owns this thing? What is its energy for? What are these protests about, really? Transfer decisions. Poor governance. Modern life. The hyper-capitalism of spectator sport. A world where endlessly loyal supporters of these cultural institutions are made to pay through the nose to act as monetised passion, the commodified backdrop to a so-so game inside a dazzling multi-purpose piece of real estate. Here, it felt as though the energy off the pitch was as vital as the action on it.

And this was a good afternoon in the end for Tottenham, 1-0 winners of a breezy, fun, medium-grade game that looked for long periods like what it was, a lower mid-table arm-wrestle. It was a good game for Ange Postecoglou, who had some players back, and found in United the perfect opponents, a visiting club that makes his own look a deeply functional, happy, settled place, with an entirely sensible playing squad.

One of the odd things about Spurs’ season is the sense of individual players performing really well, even as the team stalls. Djed Spence had another fine, wholehearted game. Dejan Kulusevski was excellent again. Lucas Bergvall is a wonderful midfielder. It was genuinely entertaining watching Bergvall repeatedly skip around Casemiro in central midfield, a spectacle with its own kind of mismatched grace, like one of those Strictly Come Dancing pairings where some twirling professional is teamed up with a 25-stone middle-aged newsreader.

United began with a very closed team, a flat defensive five with Casemiro chugging about carefully just in front in thick black woolly gloves like a dad at the swings. They struggled to deal with James Maddison from the start. The Amorim structure is easiest to learn when it has parts to press itself up against. Maddison finding those odd little half-spaces presents a problem for players learning this on the hoof.

And it was Maddison who scored the only goal after 13 minutes. What does it take to score against Manchester United? A cross from the right. sloppy marking. A deflection. A shot half-saved. Nobody running back except Maddison, who finished neatly. No devil was required here, no clever play, nothing unexpected. It was like leaning on a door that was already open.

United had their chances over the next 80 minutes or so. But most of the time they looked like a team learning to play from a leaflet, which is essentially what they are. Has anybody ever thrown half a season away like this, trying to ingrain patterns of play? It presupposes an absolute belief that there is only one way to do this, that 3-4-3 really is the grail. Are wing-backs this important? It feels like having a house party where you get so obsessed with the lasagne being ready you forget to dance, have a good time, buy any booze or say happy new year.

But then, the real problem for United is the squad, and not just its poverty but its cost, the length of contracts, the sheer witlessness in assembling it. Rasmus Højlund expended energy quite near the action, like a photographer covering some other men playing football. Joshua Zirkzee played close to him up front, rumbling about usefully, eager to be of service, like a friendly scaffolding tower.

Even the bench here was a jaw-dropper, like an A-level geography trip waiting for the train to Lyme Regis, a row of eager haircuts on best behaviour. The worst part is that there is nothing jarring or startling about this, just a sense they are extremely lucky Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton are so far behind the rest of the field.

For Spurs there was at least hope here. For the rest of us, hope just in the energy outside the game, of resistance to the world that brought both of these clubs to this strange place.