Manchester United and Tottenham look for unexpected gift from dreadful season

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Manchester United sits in 15th place in the Premier League and haven’t won a league game in eight matches, their most recent victory coming on March 16 against relegated Leicester.

Its new manager Ruben Amorim admitted this week they’ve been the Premier League’s “worst team” since he took the reins from fired Erik Ten Hag last fall.

Tottenham Hotspur are even worse in 16th, one point behind United. Their one win in their past nine matches came against relegated and historically bad Southampton.

Their manager Ange Postecoglu is widely thought to be a dead-man walking and will be out of work at the end of the season.

Most likely, one of these clubs is going to qualify for next season’s Champions League.

Inexplicably, as embarrassingly bad as both of these big-spending teams have been in the league, they’ve wormed their way into pole position to meet each other in the Europa League final, the winner of which will automatically qualify for the Champions League tournament next season.

With the expanded format and England’s ‘co-efficient’ formula that rewards countries who do well in Europe, that means the top five plus the Europa League winner will give the Premier League six spots in next year’s tournament.

You have to give Amorim and Postecoglu credit for getting their teams this far in what is a decent competition, but they’ve been beyond bad in the league and it’s astonishing to see them rewarded with a spot in the top club tournament in the world.

Qualification though brings an incentive for recruitment and a bus full of cash to help buy new players. A final between two struggling teams with big brands and so much on the line will be a fascinating watch with so much at stake and both with large, downtrodden supporter bases who will create a sparkling atmosphere.

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Anticlimax at Anfield

This weekend’s marquee game was supposed to be Liverpool vs. Arsenal at Anfield.

But with the title clinched by Liverpool two weeks ago, it’s going to be a fancy exhibition with fans in a giddy mood but the game meaning absolutely nothing in the table.

Arsenal may well be sulking after seeing all meaning to their season come to an end when they were knocked out in the Champions League at the semifinal stage versus Paris St-Germain this week. PSG will meet Inter Milan in the final of this year’s tournament.

Manchester City have reeled in the Gunners, who really have stubbed their toe in the league of late with one win, three draws and a loss in their past five. City is just three points behind Arsenal, but other than a crumb of league table prize money, the difference between second and third means little.

Technically Arsenal could miss out on Champions League, but with a six-point cushion, it would mean they’d have to lose their last three and see a bizarre concoction of results for all four chasing teams to pass them.

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with his comments this week. First, when he was asked before the PSG match about the team’s lack of trophies, he introduced Liverpool out of nowhere and said winning trophies was about luck and how Liverpool have won the league this year with less points than Arsenal had as runners up last year.

Firstly, it is factually wrong as if Liverpool wins its last three matches, they’ll have more points than Arsenal last year. Secondly, so what?

Then, after being knocked out 3-1 on aggregate by PSG, he said Arsenal was the ‘best team in the tournament’ and that they ‘deserved’ to win it.

Sour grapes, sore loser, graceless, bitter and delusional were just some of the things said about Arteta’s comments.

While he has done well to drag the Gunners to true contention on all fronts, he’s not making any friends with repeated cheap comments.

Thoughts now turn to the off-season, where Arsenal and Liverpool both are expected to chase strikers. Liverpool will appeal to a certain style of player, especially as Champions. But London is always a big draw in particular for players from other countries who may be enticed to play in a much bigger city.

Expect a load of competition and therefore ridiculous prices on strikers this summer.

Chelsea, Newcastle, Manchester United, Spurs and Manchester City all are supposedly committed to buying at least one top-end goal scorer this off-season. Liverpool never has really gone after a target where they are going to win a bidding war, so it will be more about potential and fitting into the ‘project’ than the Chelsea/City/United/Newcastle model of just spending as much money as you can on the shiniest toy in the window.

Real ambition

While the party is going to be ongoing in Liverpool for the next three weeks, there’s a tinge of bitterness with confirmation this week star right back Trent Alexander-Arnold is leaving the club for Spain on a free transfer to Real Madrid.

Liverpool had made a blockbuster offer to keep the player who was born in the city and joined their ranks at the tender age of 6, but he has cited ambition to play on a bigger stage and a new challenge to play at Madrid.

You can’t begrudge the player a chance to seek fresh objectives, but the manner in which the saga went down will tarnish his legend in his home city.

It’s clear this is Real Madrid’s new way of doing business, which some would call it sleazy. Identify a young player, talk with their agent, express interest relentlessly through press rumours and have the player run their contract down.

As a 26-year-old star, Alexander-Arnold under contract would command a price in the $100-million range. But Madrid can offer exorbitant wages if they don’t have to pay a transfer fee, leveraging the player into not renewing their contract if they want a move.

It’s exactly the same as the tactics Madrid employed to get Kylian Mbappe.

This weekend’s slate

Saturday: Fulham vs Everton; Ipswich vs Brentford; Southampton vs Manchester City; Wolves vs Brighton; Bournemouth vs Aston Villa.

Sunday: Newcastle vs Chelsea; Manchester United vs West Ham; Nottingham Forest vs Leicester; Tottenham vs Crystal Palace; Liverpool vs Arsenal.