El Sackico was supposed to settle something. It didn't. Manchester United spent the first half getting booed off by their own crowd, went ahead on 73 minutes through Bryan Mbeumo's sharp turn and finish from Matheus Cunha's pass, then watched Tottenham lose Rodrigo Bentancur five minutes later. Bentancur had only come off the bench. Luke Shaw shoved him over after a wild challenge, Bentancur got up and put his head into Shaw's, and Stuart Atwell sent him off. United were a goal and a man up with a quarter of an hour left. In the second minute of stoppage time, Sandro Tonali swung in a cross, Lisandro Martínez lost Dominic Solanke, and Spurs' captain for the day glanced it in.
So it finished 1-1. United have six points from six games, their fewest at this stage since 1986-87, and they were booed again at full time. Spurs are off the bottom but still haven't won a league game since May. Gary Neville said on Sky that "Tottenham deserved a point". One set of rooms is calling it a defeat. The other is calling it a turning point.
"Michael Carrick's to blame"
UnitedStand put it in the title, and Mark Goldbridge says it in his first breath: "Michael Carrick's to blame." He wasn't talking about the stoppage-time goal. He was talking about the first half an hour. "30% possession against bottom of the league in the first half an hour at Old Trafford and no shots on target." He says he "genuinely cannot think of a worst first half an hour to a game by Man United at Old Trafford", and he's been going a long time.
His read on how United nearly won it anyway is brutal. "Spurs can't hit the ocean from a boat." If that was Brighton, he reckons, United lose 4-0. He admits the Mbeumo goal was one of his flattest celebrations, because a win would have papered over everything. On the red card he goes against the grain. "I think Luke Shaw should have been sent off." On the equaliser he goes for the gag, saying it looked like "Bilbo Baggins going up against... the Empire State Building". He calls it "shocking defending" from Martínez, then says that isn't why United dropped points. In his view they were lucky to be ahead at all. Carrick gets a 2.5 out of 10. The live chat made Leny Yoro man of the match, and Goldbridge can't understand why Yoro was the one taken off.
"This is not a draw"
Flex on UnitedViewTV skips the ratings and goes straight to grief. "This basically feels like a loss. This is a loss. I don't care. This is not a draw." His evidence is the pattern. "Manchester City 10 men couldn't do it. Everton last season 10 men couldn't do it. 10 men again today couldn't do it." He calls United an "absolute laughingstock", and the bit that really winds him up is that the fans got the changes they'd begged for over the break and it made no difference.
There's a bit of fairness in the rant. Carlos Baleba, on for his debut, was "the bright spark", and Flex gives Carrick credit for bringing Joshua Zirkzee on. Then he looks at the fixtures and loses it again. Atlético Madrid away is on Tuesday in the Champions League, and he's already written it off. "There is no way we're going to Atlético Madrid and winning." His last word on Carrick is the one United fans will be repeating all week: "Carrick looks like he's losing control."
"Don't you dare sack him"
Andy Tate was in the ground, and on Stretford Paddock he calls it "the worst performance of the season for United for me so far". He sends the anger somewhere else, though. Andy blames the players, and his message to the board is about as clear as Andy Tate gets: "Don't you effing dare sack Michael Carrick."
His case is that the squad can't talk to each other, never mind pass to each other. He picks out Baleba and Yoro as the only two who did well, says he's "done with Martínez", and compares the back line to old dial-up broadband. "We should be wireless broadband fiber... We are telephone dial internet." He's worried about Atlético too, and says if United play like that in Madrid "we could get railroaded". It's the loudest pro-Carrick voice in the pile, and it's coming from a man who's still fuming.
"The daggers would be out"
Over to the away end. HenryTalksTottenham opens with "That is a much better performance from Tottenham," and the rest of the video is basically him working out how a much better performance still got Spurs only a draw. Spurs dominated the first half again and missed the chances again. He'd given up at 1-0. When Bentancur went, he had his head in his hands. Then the 10 men came back.
That's what he wants people to take from it. "You can clearly see that these players believe in De Zerbi." He thinks the line-up was wrong, would have started Mateus Fernandes, and calls the red card "silly. He loses his head." He's also blunt about what was riding on Solanke's goal. "If we would have lost today, the daggers would be out for Roberto De Zerbi." His title still says "0 wins in 6", and he isn't pretending otherwise.
"Man United got away with one"
The WeAreTottenhamTV instant reaction is the Spurs version of Goldbridge's argument, just from the other side of the table. "Man United got away with one today." In the room's view, if the game finishes 3-1 to Spurs, "nobody is saying anything". They praise Destiny Udogie down the left and Jan Paul van Hecke and Marcos Senesi playing out quickly, and they point out that this time Spurs didn't fold after going behind.
Solanke gets the honest treatment. The room calls him "pretty much a ghost for the majority of the game, but he comes up with that goal at the death". That leaves them with the question every Spurs fan will be asking by Monday: "Can that be the birth of Solanke's season?" Nobody in the room is willing to say yes yet.
The headbutt that helped?
Married To Tottenham had the most fun with it, and they also have the best take on the match. "It's so much worse for Carrick than it is for De Zerbi." They pick Savio as player of the day and say Solanke's six-yard miss from his cross early in the second half was "basically criminal". Then they make the case that the red card was the best thing that happened to Spurs all afternoon. "That headbutt helped the team. I never felt we look short with 10 men."
They're clear that Shaw "instigated it" and that Bentancur was always getting sent off for what he did next. Then, with tongue firmly in cheek, the room says that if you're going to get sent off for a headbutt "you should get a better connection". Nobody's recommending it. But the point underneath the joke is serious. This was the first time all season that Spurs looked like a team that would fight for each other, which is pretty much what De Zerbi said afterwards: "Today, for the first time we showed we're a team."
The argument
Both fanbases got the same 90 minutes and drew opposite conclusions. The United rooms see a side that couldn't beat 10 men again, was booed off twice, and now goes to Madrid with the manager's own words, "we were off it", hanging over him. The only fight is over whose fault it is. Goldbridge and Flex say Carrick. Andy Tate says the players. The Spurs rooms see a draw that should have been a win, a striker who might finally be up and running, and ten men who kept going after the red card. El Sackico didn't sack anyone. It just made Carrick's week a lot longer than De Zerbi's.