Old Trafford being where music died in 1992, they still like a bit of Stone Roses before kick-off. This Is The One greets the team when they walk out. At home to Crystal Palace in the middle of November, it probably isn't. But on Tuesday night it is. For Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Thomas Tuchel, this really is the one.
For Solskjaer, it is the next stage of the audition, a recall as actors have it. We have seen he can motivate, he can play the Manchester United way, he can do it against the best in the Premier League; but what about the elite of Europe?
Under even greater scrutiny, however, is Tuchel at Paris Saint-Germain. He is walking away with Ligue 1 — 10 points clear and two games in hand — but that is to be expected.
The next stage of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's audition will come on Tuesday against PSG
Like Manchester City's owners, what PSG crave is supremacy in the Champions League.
The club has not progressed past the quarter-finals in the modern, 32-team format, or beyond the semi-finals since 1994-95. Winning the league is not enough at PSG any more. If Tuchel loses in the last 16, he may not make it beyond the end of the season.
To some extent, Solskjaer has won already, just by allowing Old Trafford to feel good about this tie. When the draw was made, Manchester United were a punchline — the Premier League team all of Europe would have wanted to play. No more. Solskjaer has transformed the club, realised the potential of his squad, so that signings such as Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial now play their purchase price and Marcus Rashford plays like he's wearing an England shirt.
He is not so much the people's choice to be the next United manager, as the obvious one. He still needs this, though, to be wholly secure. If United lost, certainly if they were defeated emphatically over two legs, it would raise the first questions about the gravitas of Solskjaer's regime — about whether he has more than a feelgood factor.
PSG are good, we know this, but they couldn't beat Napoli home or away in the group stage and lost to Liverpool at Anfield. And that was with their full team. They are without Neymar and Edinson Cavani and maybe Marco Verratti, too.
PSG manager Thomas Tuchel brings his team to Old Trafford with multiple injury problems
There will rarely be a better time to play them even if Solskjaer is correct in saying this creates an element of the unknown.
Will that be mitigation for Tuchel, then? Probably not. Like Pep Guardiola at City, there is no list of injuries so great it will elicit sympathy.
PSG are presumed to have every advantage going already. Tuchel is expected to rise above misfortune. 'Immerse me in your splendour,' as the Roses sang.
So this is the one. If Solskjaer wins on Tuesday, if he progresses across the two legs, if he takes Manchester United into the Champions League's final eight, his position will be increasingly irresistible, if it is not already.
Strangely, Manchester United's caretaker has less at stake than Tuchel, in victory or defeat.
If United beat PSG, Solskjaer's position will be increasingly irresistible, if it is not already
Never mind Sarri, Hazard exit is the real concern
Eden Hazard has made his mind up. We all know what that means. If his decision was to remain at Chelsea, he could announce that now. The only reason he keeps secrets is because the club, and its fans, won't like what he has to tell them.
That doesn't mean he is definitely off to Real Madrid. He is under contract and there is a fee to negotiate; but Madrid is his choice. The fate of Maurizio Sarri, therefore, pales in significance compared to this. Chelsea's last two titles were won by Hazard's excellence; the crashing failures that followed occurred in seasons when he went missing. And now he wants to be absent, permanently.
Chelsea were once again not playing Sarri's football on Sunday. If only we knew the identity of this mysterious figure who keeps sneaking in and coaching Chelsea to all of their defeats and poor performances. Whenever Chelsea lose, Sarri distances himself and his methods from the debacle; whenever Chelsea win he claims 'his' football has saved the day.
Yet even if Sarri makes it to next season, the loss of Hazard is a game-changing blow.
Chelsea playmaker Eden Hazard has made his mind up. We all know what that means
The idea of Jorginho as Chelsea's regista, as it is known in Italy, is one dimensional and has been exposed. Yet the only reason it worked to even a limited extent this season is because Jorginho has one of Europe's greatest players to hit with his passes. Take Hazard away and Chelsea's attack is rather pedestrian.
Christian Pulisic is coming, and there will be others on the market as always — maybe even Gareth Bale if he could be made part of any deal with Real Madrid — but no-one in Hazard's class.
Carry on like this and Chelsea may not be in a position to offer Champions League football either.
This is shaping up as a perfect storm of problems, one that Sarri would need a whole playbook of ideas to solve. As opposed to just the one.
Give it to Jorginho does not always work, even if he can then feed Hazard. And if he cannot; where do Chelsea go?
Maurizio Sarri may also leave Chelsea soon, after overseeing a dreadful 6-0 loss at Chelsea
Why are we funding no-shows?
British Athletics are unlikely to field a full men's sprint team at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow next month. There are two requirements for participants: turn up to the British Indoor Championships in Birmingham, and achieve the qualifying time at least once since the start of the 2018 season.
Only three athletes have done this and one, Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, says he has no intention of competing in Glasgow.
So Britain are one short of a team. As it stands the only sprinters qualified are Ojie Edoburun, who finished eighth in Birmingham, and Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, who did not make the final.
This is the sport, remember, that costs the nation millions each time the London Stadium has to be reconfigured for a summer meeting. Yet if the runners don't care, and attendances suggest we pretty much don't care, then who actually cares? What are we funding here?
