PL Season of Mega Manager: No Soap Opera and a Lot of Fascinating Football

It started with a friendly embrace, and then that was that. From that moment on, it was all about the football—fascinating football. 

At White Hart Lane, where even a missing portion of the stand couldn’t dampen the atmosphere, Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur went for Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in a way that made for some spectacle.

It was brilliant and it was suffocating, but it wasn’t controversial nor overshadowed by a sideshow, and that’s the point.

Victor Wanyana crunched into tackles, looking part footballer, part Captain America. Kyle Walker and Danny Rose operated up and down the flanks like Scalextric cars controlled by a trigger-happy toddler. Dele Alli and Moussa Sissoko pressed and harried in a way that reminded of Quique Sanchez Flores’ assessment last season that Spurs are like “animals.” Heung-Min Son, as wonderfully described by Bleacher Report’s Alex Dunn, had the energy levels of “a children’s TV presenter hooked up to an intravenous drip of pure Skittles.”

If Tottenham’s opening goal was gifted to them by Aleksandar Kolarov, it was also a reflection of how ferocious their pressure was. Their second through Alli confirmed it, turning the ball over and running at City in waves, slicing open a side considered the most sophisticated in the land. 

The 2-0 scoreline at the final whistle was a fair reflection. And just in the way it had all started, the whole thing ended with a friendly embrace, and that was that. Football had dominated the day, as it had done across the season to that point, and that in itself feels like a triumph. 

This is how Tottenham ended Pep Guardiola’s perfect Premier League start… pic.twitter.com/ixwetmKDWr

— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) October 3, 2016

As the 2016-17 Premier League season approached back in the summer, it had the look of a looming DVD box set of planet-sized personalities colliding across 38 episodes. Guardiola and Antoine Conte had arrived and Jose Mourinho was back, joining the heavyweights already here in Pochettino, Jurgen Klopp and Arsene Wenger. 

It didn’t long for the barbs to start. When Manchester United spent enough money on Paul Pogba to create a breakaway economy, Klopp said “the day that this is football, I’m not in a job anymore.”

Wenger labelled the fee as “completely crazy,” prompting Mourinho to shoot back on MUTV (h/t the Press Association’s Phil Medlicott, via the Daily Mail) with: “I don’t think they ever have this problem because, to have this problem, you need to be at one of the top clubs in the world.”

The Pogba deal itself seemed to …

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