Ruben Amorim and Arne Slot
It is Liverpool against Manchester United and a manager is on a historically bad run. Not Ruben Amorim, either, who has equalled his longest winning sequence in the Premier League as United head coach (admittedly, that is only one victory). But Arne Slot has suffered three successive defeats for the first time: in his managerial career, not merely in his reign on Merseyside.
They have been counterparts and opposites, the men in charge of England’s two biggest clubs, appointed within a few months of each other, when there was a scenario whereby Amorim could have got what is instead Slot’s job, after comparable records in their homeland.