The mood in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is probably muzzle – of both sets of fans.
Anger has only grown among the supporters of Spurs and Manchester United, because the seasons of their clubs of the debacle have continued to fall downhill in recent weeks.
In the best case, it becomes 14th versus 13th, where tracks suffered moral-sappe and embarrassing outputs of both domestic cups last week and United have escaped through the skin of their teeth against Leicester.
Two clubs that have lost their way and all the conviction.
It means editing the pressure on Ange Postecoglou and Ruben Amorim.
But you don't need a long memory to remember that we have been here before, for the same two clubs, barely three years ago.
On that occasion the loser won. Because it has brought a change of manager and, for a few months, a feeling of direction.
While the winner missed the obvious management replacement, he jumped through for three weeks before he bends for the inevitable and finished more than 30 points behind their two most bitter rivals.
October 30, 2021. United comes to N17 on the back of a 5-0 home that drips through Liverpool, with only one point of their last four Prem games.
Under the fluctuating, ragged and doomed rule of a real Old Trafford hero, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
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Spurs, just a few months under the helm of Nuno Espirito Santo, who seemed to end with the performance because no one else wanted it after the forced departure of Jose Mourinho the previous season.
Although Nuno's tactical approach is working a dream in Nottingham Forest this season, it had already set the Spurs fans on sharply.
They did not make bones about their desire to see a team that the ball wanted, did not want to play a less pleasant version of the same reactive football that was offered under Mourinho.
When Spurs lost three London derby's on the Stuiter, only scored over them once and three in every match admitted to Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Arsenal, before it won over Villa and Newcastle, it felt as if the next blip would be the last.
A week earlier that blip came. Another derby defeat, 1-0 at West Ham.
The heat was on. And Nuno – and his team – melted.
It was only when Marcus Rashford scored the third of United, four minutes after the time, after earlier goals from Cristiano Ronaldo and Edinson Cavani, that the Thuis fans stopped singing for Nuno's head.
But only to turn their anger at chairman Daniel Levy – A Groundswell of dissatisfaction with him who has hardly decreased since then.
Levy acted in the way many club bosses do when the fans put on them – he dismissed Nuno and replaced him by Antonio Conte – the man who would have been the preferred candidate to replace Solskjaer, had lost United.
Towards the end of the season, with Harry Kane back between the goals and Heung-Min Son who won the Prem Golden Boot, Spurs was back in the Champions League-Nadat he had defeated Arsenal in a titanic adrenaline-driven display In the last weeks of the season to turn the side of Mikel Arteta off the top four.
Solskjaer had long been gone by that time. In the first aftermath, who thinks about a “difficult week”, the Norwegian said it demonstrated that the club and fan base “connected together”.
Within three weeks, that was unraveled, a crushing loss of 4-1 in Watford that brought the end.
Of course, Conte's relationship with Levy and the club eventually founded and splintered into small pieces, the fuels that dropped a nuclear bomb in the dressing room the next March and run away to leave the ashes of the fall-out for others to repair.
In reality, Postecoglou still had everything to deal with when he arrived, plus filling the gigantic kane format hole in his team.
Last season, the fifth place, despite a whole series of injuries, was a huge step forward. This term, even worse with the injury situation, has been a debacle.
Yet it has been little better for United Under Amorim, with only 14 points in its 13 Prem matches, only three more than traces in the same period.
And in contrast to Postecoglou, whose conviction that his party will collect the results when the massive ranks of the wounded brigade return to active service, seem to have shown what this united side is in recent weeks.
Able to play when the pressure is away from home. Not able to perform at all when they have to 'make' the game at Old Trafford.
Until now it seems that none of the two signs at this stage will press the button – although a complicated monitoring could bring a change of heart by both teams.
But where it was bad in October 2021, they are demonstrably worse for this meeting of the Miserables. Two clubs, united in despair.
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