It's the summer of 2014 and David Moyes is one season into his six-year contract at Old Trafford.
Louis van Gaal is sitting on his seat now though and United, as a football entity, have just transformed into a short-term fire-fighting operation.
Mauricio Pochettino has been hired as Spurs boss after making a laughing stock out of everyone who labelled Southampton as scum for ousting Nigel Adkins to make way for the Argentine.
The season before last, United finished as champions, 11 points clear of City and 18 ahead of fifth-placed Tottenham. That was also their last year with Gareth Bale and they've since called on Tim Sherwood to take charge of the club for a brief period. There's a big task ahead of Pochettino.
Ed Woodward, meanwhile, is throwing money at the problem and, despite the bad press he gets, the amount of investment he pumps into the squad is incredible.
Manchester United signings since Pochettino joined Spurs
2014
Angel Di Maria
Luke Shaw
Ander Herrera
Marcos Rojo
Daley Blind
Falcao
Vanja Milinković-Savić
2015
Anthony Martial
Morgan Schneiderlin
Memphis Depay
Matteo Darmian
Bastian Schweinsteiger
Sergio Romero
2016 - Mourinho joins
Paul Pogba
Henrikh Mkhitaryan
Eric Bailly
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
2017
Romelu Lukaku
Nemanja Matic
Victor Lindelof
Alexis Sanchez
2018
Fred
Diogo Dalot
Lee Grant
Before the start of his third season, Jose Mourinho made his 11th Manchester United signing. 11 players that cost £389m.
On Monday night though, after being humbled by Spurs 3-0 at home, the manager basically shrugged his shoulders - yet again. What do you want me to do? That's the sort of attitude Mourinho has to one of the biggest jobs in football as he plays the fans like a fiddle and turns them on the executive vice-chairman instead.
What do you want me to do with £389m?
In his third season, he once again turned to Phil Jones and Chris Smalling - how many chances do we need to decide they're not up to it? He even played Ander Herrera alongside them at centre back and kept Victor Lindelof and Eric Bailly - players he signed - out of the action. Perhaps it was to prove a point to the board after throwing tantrums about buying a defender all summer but the only point he was proving was that he wasted another £70m of the club's money signing two centre halves that he now deems lesser than Jones and Smalling and Herrera.
In his third season, as Pep Guardiola presumably doesn't even consider Mourinho a threat anymore and Pochettino enhances his and Spurs' reputation even further, United fans were gushing at what was described as a good first half - one which ended with Martin Tyler summarising just how good it really was.
"They've made life difficult for Spurs. Restricted them to a couple of chances."
What the hell has happened to Manchester United?
United. Making life difficult for Spurs. At Old Trafford.
A non-fatal opening 45 minutes clung onto as some sort of hope - for Manchester United - in a game they lost 3-0. At home.
Now consider this:
Since Pochettino took over at Spurs, Manchester United have spent £630m. The NET spend in that time was £440m.
In the same time, Spurs have spent £260m. NET spend: £19m.
And, still, after being pummelled by Tottenham in front of over 74,000 people, Mourinho was being absolved of any sort of responsibility for this team he has and has been working with since June 2016. Instead, Ed Woodward was being blamed for not spending the guts of a century of millions on Harry Maguire's slab head. The manager, meanwhile, isn't expected to have any sort of control over any situation.
Yet Pochettino is able to influence his team alright. Pochettino, whose boss wouldn't even fork out an extra 5 million for Jack Grealish, is somehow able show that he can actually be a manager of a football team as well as a money-spender. And Pochettino, who was denied buying even one player in the last transfer market, is able to completely crush a Manchester United side at Old Trafford and make it look as if Spurs have joined Liverpool and City in leaving Jose Mourinho behind.
And he's done that in four years, with a NET investment of £421m less than what Ed Woodward has allowed for at United.
