City's scandal is hiding Utd and Spurs' mess

Rúben Amorim's Manchester United sit 12th in the Premier League after six games, six points from one win, three draws and two defeats, a goal difference of precisely zero. That's a club with a squad valued at over €722m, one that spent a net €44m this window, still looking for any kind of rhythm. A draw doesn't move the needle on any of that. It just extends the wait.

Tottenham's situation reads differently on paper but feels familiar in tone. Brewin's Guardian piece frames both clubs as teams coming back to reality after City's regulatory drama offered the rest of the division a brief distraction, a weekend where the biggest story in the league wasn't about football at all.

The City effect

Manchester City's rule-breach case has hung over English football for what feels like forever, and the ticker Brewin references, 51 years and counting since City's last trophy before their modern era, is the kind of detail that puts the current saga in context rather than news in itself. But the effect on the wider conversation is real: when City dominate the agenda, United and Spurs get a pass they probably don't deserve.

That pass doesn't last. Brewin's framing is blunt: the draws brought no respite, because the problems at both clubs were never really about one result. Old Trafford's issues run through recruitment, structure and form under Amorim, a manager still searching for a settled identity with a squad built under different regimes. Spurs' dysfunction, per the same report, sits just as deep.

No cover for long

The uncomfortable truth for both clubs is that City's scandal is a news cycle, not a permanent shield. Once the regulatory story quiets, even briefly, the questions about United's stagnant league position and Spurs' own crisis come straight back into focus. A point here or there changes nothing about the underlying picture Brewin describes: two of England's biggest clubs, both mired in dysfunction, both drawing games that settle nothing.

Manchester United's next few fixtures will tell Amorim more about where his side actually stands than this draw did. Tottenham face the same reckoning. City's saga will keep making headlines for now, but it isn't going to keep doing the other two any favours.