Premier League picks, predictions: Manchester United and Tottenham battle to prove they’re top four contenders

After last week’s main event, it’s now time for the junior varsity dustup between North London and Manchester. Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at the Etihad Stadium had everything you would want from a clash of champions: high quality football, overwrought drama, enough incidents to have tided the punditocracy through even the most tepid of international breaks.

Manchester United vs. Tottenham, though, what even is that? If the early season table is to be belived, not a lot. Tenth hosts 11th, the battle firmly on for these sides to stay in touch with Fulham and Nottingham Forest before they even begin to think about placing themselves in the mix alongside the serious contenders for a top four or five berth. With the heavy toll of the Europa League in their legs, don’t expect vintage fare.

Then again, perhaps the table merits closer examination. After all, one of the most notable quirks five games through the season is an impressive goal difference for Tottenham, their plus four clear of teams with altogether healthier points tallies such as Aston Villa and Newcastle. The case might be made that their goal return has been artificially inflated by a convincing win over Everton, but isn’t crushing the lesser lights of the league a mark of a good team?

There are other such marks in the small sample size of data we have so far. Tottenham’s expected goals difference of 3.69 is the third best in the division behind Liverpool and Manchester City. Scrub penalties from the equation and they have the fourth best attack and the seventh best defense, reasonably compelling numbers when they’ve already played Arsenal and Newcastle. The shots are coming for Ange Postecoglu’s side, intriguingly spread across the team with plenty falling to the right side of Brennan Johnson and Pedro Porro. At their best, Spurs look like a team with compelling balance, James Maddison capable of dragging a team over to the left side, opening up space that can be attacked at the back post.

The case in point might be their first game of the season, where Leicester’s defense cannot help but shade over to their right given the threat posed by Maddison, Destiny Udogie and Son Heung-Min. Such is the space that then opens up that Maddison could clip the ball to an unmarked Johnson, instead it goes right into the path of Porro to head home.

Early in the season it may be but there is a lot that Spurs are getting right. They have recovered possession in the final third on 42 occasions, Bournemouth at 34 are the only team in the thirties. Jurgen Klopp famously labelled a good counterpress to be better than any playmaker on the planet. Fortunately for them, Tottenham have a bit of both. Son and Solanke already have goals handed to them by opponents spooked while Maddison is leading the league with 2.86 expected assists.

The big question for Tottenham is whether all this territorial dominance should amount to more. When you have Manchester City levels of possession and field tilt you want to translate that into something at least comparable to the title favorites. The fear ought to be that Postecoglu’s system with players of Spurs level talent translates into too many games like the north London derby, where Tottenham control territory and pass it around neatly enough without ever really applying pressure on the penalty area. All that, and the back door is left ajar for the counter.

If anyone should test that theory it’s United. About the only consistently positive aspect of their attack under Erik ten Hag has been their countering, give open field to the likes of Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford and you will get hurt. The task for season three under this manager was to change that and to look at their results so far you would question whether they have. Five goals from five league games, three of those coming in swatting aside a Southampton side who fell apart after missing an early penalty.

Again, however, there are early season murmurings. This attack might not have found the net at Selhurst Park but they played well and put up 1.7 non-penalty xG. That continued an encouraging trend in their early games, United’s npxG of 9.59 comfortably the third best in the top flight. Best of all, they are taking good shots, not a boat load of bad efforts, and new signing Joshua Zirkzee in particular got himself in really good positions against both Southampton and Liverpool.

At the end of last season xG painted an exceptionally bleak picture of Ten Hag’s United, one of Europe’s leakiest defences with a paper tiger attack. Does that all change because of a few additions from the Bayern Munich fringes? It is certainly too soon to discount how bad this team were last season, particularly when their early season fixture list has, aside from Liverpool at home, been pretty favorable on paper.

Will these starts of underlying encouragement translate into real top four tilts? In both cases, what you find yourself asking is whether this team has the superstar talent required to make separation from the rest of the top four case. It is not an open and shut debate. If Bruno Fernandes or, unlikely as it seems given that only two of his last six Premier League seasons have delivered over 12 goals, Rashford catch fire then Ten Hag has the sort of forward that can deliver a run of game changing performances. Pair that with a defense that actually pushes upfield as its manager seems to want and an anchoring midfielder with any manoeuvrability at all, that might be something.

Spurs’ X-factor is altogether more straightforward: Son being Son. The Premier League’s best finisher over the past decade continues to do a lot more than most would with the chances he has been given and has picked up creative slack under Postecoglu. 

The scintilla of a worry is that the 32-year-old is not getting the shots he used to, dropping from somewhere in the region of 2.5 per 90 minutes over each of the last three seasons to 1.4 this season. Indeed, against Newcastle, Brentford and Arsenal he managed just one, in that latter game it was a tame effort straight at Ethan Nwaneri after 95 minutes where he could not really get separation from Ben White. If Son isn’t what he was — and it is certainly too soon to discount a talent of his level — then the fear has to be that Spurs lose their one world class talent and that a collection of good not great youngsters can’t quite do what is needed to secure what promises to be a tightly contested top four berth.

Then again, perhaps Son will roar into life in due course. And perhaps the fight won’t need to be that cutthroat anyway; if Spurs and Manchester United can do the business in the Europa League this season then there might be five Champions League spots on the Premier League table. For now these two teams just feel a little too unknowable. Perhaps their meeting will shed greater light on their trajectory.

Scroll down for our predicted scoreline in this and every other one of today’s Premier League games:

Premier League predictions

Saturday, September 28
Newcastle 1, Manchester City 2
Arsenal 3, Leicester City 0
Brentford 2, West Ham 1
Chelsea 2, Brighton 1
Everton 1, Crystal Palace 0
Nottingham Forest 0, Fulham 0
Wolves 0, Liverpool 2

Sunday, September 29
Ipswich Town 1, Aston Villa 3
Manchester United 2, Tottenham 2

Monday, September 30
Bournemouth 4, Southampton 0