At Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United in the late summer of 1987, a winning August in the old First Division had given way to a more difficult September.
United hadn't won a league title for 20 years and Ferguson was only at the start of his first full season as manager. But United were still United and an awful lot of reputation was wrapped up in that name.
So teams would come to Old Trafford and play conservatively, sitting deep to frustrate a side containing star names such as Bryan Robson, Norman Whiteside, Gordon Strachan and Brian McClair.
It had been that way as Ferguson's team laboured to a draw at home to Newcastle on September 12. United's football had been too slow and passive. Too 'robotic' as Gary Neville may describe it today.
Ferguson was still establishing his authority with United supporters but decided he'd heard enough, using his programme notes for the following home game with Tottenham to explain his team's dilemma.
'From time to time in the modern game it is necessary to hang on to the ball at the back, perhaps passing square across the back four,' Ferguson wrote.
'It is not our intention to bore our spectators but at times a necessary ploy in the tactical battle.
'I know you hate this kind of football and soon grow restive if you start to see the ball being played around by defenders.
'But if a visiting team sit back in their own half you have 20 players crammed into 40 yards of a pitch just 76 yards wide. We have to try and find a way through.
'So we keep possession and hope for a better angle and also hope opponents will get fed up and come out and try and win the ball. This creates more space. But we need patience from our supporters.'
Viewed today, Ferguson's plea to his club's fans is instructive. It shows us how some of the modern parlance we use and hear now is merely new language for old tactics. What he talked about that day 28 years ago was essentially about drawing, and then beating, an opposition 'press'.
His words also tell us how much football styles and trends have changed. What we have learned to accept and even sometimes applaud in the current Premier League was once something the manager of the country's biggest club felt the need to apologise for. In the 1980s the English football fan wanted to see their team get the ball forward and do it quickly.
Neville's words after last weekend's soporific Manchester derby struck a chord. His voice is powerful and other pundits – such as Robbie Savage and Stan Collymore – have continued the debate about whether today's players are over coached and too often tied up in tactical straitjackets by their control-freak managers.
There is something in it, at least to a degree. Scouts of young players will tell you how academy goalkeepers don't learn how to handle high balls under pressure anymore because age group teams no longer cross the ball. It is deemed unsophisticated.
OPTA stats I obtained this week show that the percentage of long passes in the Premier League continues to fall. There were 132 in an average fixture 10 years ago and now that figure is down to 94 for the current season. It's a figure that on the whole falls year and year.
Possession is key to many modern coaches and if they can't have that then some semblance of control must be found in allowing the opposition to have the ball in a relatively harmless area of the field.
Some coaches would rather their winger draw a tactical foul than attempt a trick that may see him lose possession. On TV last week, meanwhile, Graham Potter spoke almost apologetically about an equalising goal for his West Ham team that came from a corner aimed towards a big man - the German Niclas Fullkrug.
Equally, Ferguson's programme plea also points to an enduring footballing challenge, namely that it's desperately difficult to play entertaining and vibrant football all the time.
The Liverpool teams of the 1970s and 1980s used to ferry the ball back and across the defence endlessly and took pride in it. They too were waiting for openings. Meanwhile Strachan, who played that afternoon in 1987, once told me the great undoing of Howard Wilkinson's title winning Leeds team of 1992 – in which he also played – was the subsequent introduction of the back pass law which stopped their tactic of relieving pressure by playing the ball back to goalkeeper John Lukic.
The best teams have always had frame works on which to play. The expression and instinctiveness so absent in last Sunday's derby just have to be built on top of that.
Over the course of the last week and a half I have attended five live games – Nottingham Forest vs Manchester United, Liverpool vs Everton, United vs Manchester City and the Arsenal and Aston Villa Champions League games. I watched another - Villa vs Forest – on the television.
The Manchester derby was the outlier of the group by a mile. There was much to love in the other games from players such as Anthony Elanga and Morgan Gibbs-White, Diogo Jota, Morgan Rogers, Bukayo Saka and then, in Paris, the deeply talented PSG duo of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue. These are not footballers who are being kept in cages by their managers, quite the opposite. They are being handed a tactical structure and told to use their intelligence and instinct to flourish on the back of it. When it works the game is as beautiful as it ever was.
Villa vs Forest was a thrilling game of Premier League football with evidence of clever coaching and development of players sprinkled all over it. We should be proud of games like that because they represent the very best of a Premier League that continues to grow and change.
If we really do think our best talent is being stifled then supporters of other upwardly progressive clubs such as Fulham and Newcastle may wish to contribute to the debate while the presence of Villa, Forest and Crystal Palace in the FA Cup semi-finals perhaps indicates that a new approach is being taken to some of our game's traditional glass ceilings.
I don't think our best managers are cautious. I actually think the opposite. They are getting braver.
Yes, the Manchester derby was disappointing. Desperately so. But there have been other bad games played on that pitch before down the years.
The day in 1987 that Ferguson wrote those programme notes all but apologising for his team's stifling play? They beat Tottenham 1-0. With a penalty.
Europe not the be-all and end-all for Ange
Judgement day looms for Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham but I am told Daniel Levy will not be unduly influenced by what happens in the Europa League.
A decision on Postecoglou's future will be driven by what has happened over the last two years – rather than one knock out competition - and that seems eminently sensible.
Meanwhile, Postecoglou is not the only Tottenham figurehead under scrutiny. The same can be said for the club's chief football officer Scott Munn.