By the time Manchester United resume their quest for the Champions Cup in Monaco on March 4th, the bookmakers will probably be taking no more bets on the likelihood of the Premier League title going to Old Trafford for the fifth time in six seasons. All United need do between now and then is keep the home fires burning.

On Saturday, this amounted to little more than a couple of prods with the poker. Why waste another log on Tottenham, a casualty clearing station masquerading as a football team ?

The Department of Employment may have denied Christian Gross, the Swiss coach charged with the task of keeping Spurs up, the assistance of his former physio at Grasshoppers, Fritz Schmid, but he might have had better luck with Baron Frankenstein given White Hart Lane's present chronic shortage of spare parts.

For the rapidly-diminishing number of teams still with a realistic chance of overtaking Manchester United, Saturday's low-key performance must have been as depressing as the awesome exhibition of attacking football which had overwhelmed Chelsea in the FA Cup six days earlier. If United can still win comfortably with so many of Alex Ferguson's players stuck in neutral, then what chance is there for anyone else?

So far, the season has worked out much as Ferguson would have planned it. Since ensuring themselves of a place in the Champions League quarter-finals, his team have won six Premiership matches out of seven - a run which has included emphatic victories against two potential rivals, Blackburn Rovers and Liverpool.

For the moment, Manchester United are catchable, but their coming fixtures suggest that this will soon be little more than an arithmetical hypothesis. Before meeting Monaco, United will play Southampton, Aston Villa and Chelsea away and Leicester City, Bolton Wanderers and Derby County at home. If they emerge from these six games with fewer than, say, 15 points, it will be a surprise.

Not that United will get away with too many repetitions of Saturday's absent-minded approach to a game which was only redeemed by a singular display of virtuosity from Ryan Giggs, who scored both goals in a 2-0 victory and set up the possibility of several more with runs past defenders and imaginative passing.

For Ferguson, this is the beauty of his present situation. He could rest a slight-bruised Nicky Butt, the best player at Stamford Bridge in the Cup, switch Paul Scholes to the role of anchor man, move Giggs inside, give Ole Solskjaer match practice as a wide attacker without disturbing the burgeoning partnership of Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole, and still win easily.

That Cole did not score was due largely to excellent goalkeeping by Espen Baardsen, the Norwegian alternative to the injured Ian Walker. Unhappily for Tottenham, Baardsen's only mistake cost them a goal on the stroke of half-time when he failed to hold a centre from David Beckham in the face of Sheringham's routine challenge and allowed the ball to fall to Giggs, who drove it firmly into the net.

Seven minutes past the hour, another of Beckham's crosses found Sol Campbell and Ramon Vega both following Cole, leaving Giggs to score with a rare header. Earlier, he had cleared a dangerous centre from Ruel Fox with an even rarer header at the other end. Ferguson has always believed Giggs would add things to his game, but has probably not regarded him as an alternative to Gary Pallister.

If the winners were unremarkable, Giggs apart, the losers' performance had the grim fascination of a traffic accident. It would have been kinder to look the other way, but the sheer awfulness of the spectacle demanded attention.

Jurgen Klinsmann felt that the biggest difference between the teams lay in the amount of running United achieved off the ball. "In our team," he added, "the player in the worst situation was the man who had the ball because he did not know where to pass it." Klinsmann still has not scored since returning to White Hart Lane a fortnight ago, but neither has he received the sort of service he needs.

In an effort to give him better support, Spurs have recruited the experienced, but out-of-practice Nicola Berti, an industrious midfielder with sound Italian technique, from Internazionale. Berti

must be wondering what he has got himself into. On Saturday he looked like the hero in Day of the Triffids who recovers from an eye operation to find everyone else stumbling blindly around.

Had Jose Dominguez taken the opportunity he had helped to set up with Fox midway through the first half, Tottenham might at least have persuaded United to find a higher gear. But Peter Schmeichel managed to touch the tiny Portuguese player's shot wide and the rest was down to Giggs.

Gross remains professionally optimistic about keeping Spurs in the Premier League, but as Klinsmann admitted: "We are in big, big trouble now." Tottenham's next fixture is against West Ham at home, followed by visits to Derby, Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday with a mutually angst-ridden affair against Bolton at White Hart Lane on February 28th. Troubled times indeed.

Manchester United: Schmeichel, Neville, Irwin, Johnsen, Pallister, Beckham, Cole, Sheringham, Giggs, Scholes, Solskjaer. Subs Not Used: Butt, McClair, Berg, Clegg, Pilkington. Goals: Giggs 44, 67.

Tottenham Hotspur: Baardsen, Calderwood, Fox (Brady 77), Carr, Vega, Wilson, Domingues, Campbell, Clemence (Sinton 54), Klinsmann, Berti. Subs Not Used: Brown, Mabbutt, Mahorn. Booked: Klinsmann.

Referee: P E Alcock (Redhill).