The Europa League final of failures... and even the Spurs...

The days before a major final are a time for rhetorical flourishes, for cris de coeur, for calls to arms. The stakes, after all, could not really be higher. Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have both placed what few slightly out-of-date eggs they possess in the Europa League basket.

It is not just the only trophy both can win this season; it is their one, last chance to add some gloss to what has been an otherwise desperate campaign. It is likely the sole route remaining for Ange Postecoglou to retain his job, or at the very least to leave north London in a manner he would regard as fitting.

Increasingly, it feels like a watershed for Ruben Amorim, too. In his first few months at Old Trafford, he has led United from 14th in the Premier League table to 16th in the Premier League table. It will be the club’s lowest finish since the resignation of Richard Nixon. He has won just two league games since January, and they were against Leicester and Ipswich.

He will not be fired, of course; the club’s owners are too invested in his success, and too strapped for cash, to change course now. But if his first season does not have a golden coda, the chances of him surviving a second grow notably slimmer.

And yet, despite all of that, it feels like neither manager is quite playing the role demanded of them. The best Amorim could muster was declaring, earlier this month, that the “Europa League will not change anything” in terms of United’s endemic problems. As a rule, managers should be roaring things on these occasions. Amorim, instead, claimed that “nothing is going to save our season”. It does not exactly get the blood pumping.

Postecoglou has done a little better – winning the Europa League would be “massive” for Spurs, he said, after his side had picked their way past Bodo/Glimt in the semifinals – but his mien has become so morose in general that he, too, may be struggling to lift everyone’s spirits. “I thought the boys worked hard up until they scored,” he said after Spurs’ defeat at Aston Villa on Friday. It is not, exactly, St Crispin’s Day.

It would be dishonest, at this stage, not to acknowledge that in the strictly isolated context of the Europa League, both United and Spurs deserve their place in Bilbao; both have been strikingly, actually quite confusingly, impressive in Europe this season. The teams they have overcome – Lyon and Eintracht Frankfurt and Athletic Club – are no lightweights.

But that does not diminish the sense that this final will be a very strange one indeed: two teams more concerned with glory as a means, rather than an end; two teams searching not for success but for avoiding dishonour; two teams who are more defined by their obvious weaknesses than their concealed strengths.

Perhaps, in that sense, Amorim’s policy of radical honesty is the right one. Winning the Europa League will not solve anyone’s problems. What is certain, though, is that it is the only option for both. Victory is not a panacea, but defeat is catastrophe. For both sides, this is a last stand. Only one can succeed. That jeopardy may yet prove to be compelling: just right for a final, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

The damning stats

Tottenham Hotspur

Premier League position: 17th

Points per game: 1.02

Losses from winning position: 6 (joint second worst in the Premier League)

Expected goals against: 65.11 (17th in Premier League)

Manchester United

Premier League position: 16th

Points per game: 1.05

xG v Actual: -0.39(the second worst in the Premier League)

Shots per goal percentage: 7% (second worst in Premier League)