- 5/29/2025
It won't happen this season, obviously, but Manchester United's form this season has seen them slip to the usually-perilous 16th in the table. But what if Ruben Amorim's had been in charge all season? And what do the underlying numbers this season predict for them in the next campaign? Adam Clery lost his entire Sunday night making some spreadsheets to find out.
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00:00Right, hello everybody, Adam Cleary, ACFC here for you and welcome Manchester United.
00:06Under the stewardship of a one Ruben Amorim, they cannot control possession,
00:11they cannot control transition, they cannot defend with any real structure and they still
00:15make loads of individual errors. And thus, as of game week 36, or just right now,
00:22as it's known, they occupy the position of a team that could conceivably get relegated.
00:28Obviously, they're not going to get relegated, that's all been decided, they're absolutely
00:31miles away from being in any real danger, but usually, the teams in 16th and 17th place
00:37have a genuine shout for going down. So, what we're going to do today is we're going to examine
00:43this Manchester United team in detail and then compare them to all the relegated teams of the
00:49last 10 years to see whether this is just a really weird season or whether Man United are bad enough
00:57to actually go down.
01:02Okay, so, first off, this is merely a thought experiment for this season and potentially,
01:08if they don't improve, relevant for next season. Now, of course, what has actually got this Man
01:14United team in this position in the first place? We've already, we've covered that on the channel,
01:18we've done a deep dive into Amorim's system, why it still isn't working the way it's supposed to.
01:24And just the really, really, really, really, really, really short version of that is that
01:29he is a manager with an unshakable belief in a certain way of playing football and that certain
01:34way is running. Running wide to allow you to play out, running centrally to allow you to create
01:40chances, running with the ball to destabilise your opponent's shape, running without the ball
01:44to cover areas defensively. The system is just so fundamentally based on this direct vertical
01:50style of football, both in defence and attack. And of the many problems he seems to have at Man
01:55United, the main one is that a lot of these players have proven thus far unsuited to doing that. And
02:01just to really quickly massively oversimplify it to make it sound like I know what I'm talking about,
02:06they are third in the league this season for carries, that is running with the ball,
02:10that's what they're trying to do. But then they dropped to 10th for carries into the opponent's third,
02:15which is literally the whole point, and third bottom for the number of chances created as a
02:20direct result of carrying the ball. So you can see they're doing a thing a lot, but the thing is not
02:26good. But the question that you and I, or however I'm supposed to point, are going to answer today is,
02:32is here as bad as it actually looks? Are they genuinely as bad as the teams that tend to get relegated?
02:42Well, first off, we have to establish what a relegated team actually looks like. And I spent
02:49my Sunday night going through the last 10 years of teams relegated from the Premier League to see
02:54how often the three worst attacks, the three worst defences, the three least creative, and the three
03:01most open teams ended up being the actual bottom three. And no, actually, since you ask, I don't have
03:09a girlfriend. But anyway, if you're also an air quotes, massive virgin, I'll leave this up so you can
03:14get a proper look at it. But that's the seasons on the left. And that is how many of the bottom three
03:20in the table were the bottom three for that particular statistic. Now what's interesting there,
03:26and obviously I use the term interesting extremely loosely, is that the key thing here is goals scored.
03:32I feel like you always hear that you have to defend well when you get promoted, if you want to stay in
03:37the division. But if you were in the three lowest defences in the Premier League in the last 10 years,
03:42you only went down two thirds of the time. Whereas if you had one of the three worst attacks in terms
03:47of goals scored, it was 75% of the time. Now, Man United are 16th this season for the number of goals
03:54scored. So that's not great, but encouraging. 13th for the number of goals against, which is pretty good.
03:59And 15th on goal differences also seems to indicate who gets relegated. Now, obviously,
04:04those are still bad, but crucially, they're not going down bad, are they? Which is the whole point
04:10of the video. So there you go. Wrap that one up super quick. Man United, for all the problems,
04:16they're not in any real danger of slipping into... You've seen it, haven't you? You've noticed the
04:23run time. We've still got a while to go yet. So yeah, not quite as simple as that. And it gets worse.
04:32You see, this Manchester United side has actually only played 25 games this season.
04:38This Manchester United side, if you can dare to remember them, played the first 11 games of the
04:43season. And while they were bad enough to get their manager the sack, statistically speaking,
04:48they were performing better than the current Manchester United. So what if this Manchester
04:54United side had actually played the entire season instead? Which, of course, is what is going to
05:00happen next season? Well, first off, let's delete the composite Manchester United and instead extrapolate
05:07from the current one. Word of the day toilet paper paying for itself. 25 games, 6 wins, 6 draws, 13 losses,
05:1530 goals scored, 41 conceded, minus 11 goal difference, 24 points. Or crucially, 0.96 points per game.
05:27Now, you divide all that by 25, which is the number of games they've played, and then you times it by 36,
05:32thus sort of pretending they'd played the entire season. 43 goals scored, 60 goals conceded,
05:39minus 17 goal difference. Now, granted, that is one more goal scored, but it's also 10 more conceded,
05:45which puts them 17th in the table both in reality and for goals against and for goal difference. And
05:51granted, there are still two games left to play this season, but 34 points minus 17 would relegate a
05:59team in three of the last 10 seasons. And they'd actually only be staying up on goal difference in
06:06another three of those seasons. And like I said, there are still two games left to play,
06:10so they could conceivably finish on 40. But I know some Manchester United fans, I've got friends,
06:16believe it or not, and they have already made their peace with losing, not because they've got one eye on
06:22the Europa League final, but because they just think Villa and Brighton are much better than they are.
06:29So now, all of a sudden, you are talking about a team that statistically resembles sides that end up
06:37getting relegated. And look, I know we're being extremely hypothetical with all this, football is
06:41obviously not decided on a spreadsheet with some clever formulas in it, but if you will just humour me
06:46to carry this thought process on a little bit, it gets even worse. If they lose those two games,
06:54then it's 0.87 points per game since he took over, which over the course of a season would give you
07:0233 points, just. And regardless of what the goal difference is, 33 points would relegate you six
07:11times in the last ten seasons. And if they lose both those games without scoring, which feels
07:17perfectly possible, that's 30 goals in 27 games, which over a season would give you 41. That's as
07:26many as Burnley got last year. And yes, okay, again, I feel the need to reiterate, this is all
07:32purely hypothetical, they are absolutely staying up, they'll probably buy players and improve
07:37next season. But I just think looking at all these numbers is useful and interesting for
07:42understanding the scale of the underachievement this season. And if you will just humour me for
07:49a few minutes more, I'm going to show you how this Man United team compares to your average
07:55relegated team. Now, before we start, I'm going to be sensible here, because if we average together
08:00all the teams that went down over the last ten years, you'd have all the bedwetters in 20th really
08:06pulling those numbers down. And you don't have to finish 20th, you haven't got to be the worst team
08:10in the league to get relegated, you only have to be 18th. So again, last night, instead of doing
08:15something normal, like texting somebody I fancied, I created the average 18th place team in the Premier
08:22League in the last decade. I couldn't decide what to call them, so rather than taking liberties with
08:28Sky Sports, intellectual property for once, I'm going to take liberties with Sky Wands.
08:33Parchesti United. They've got the combined average of wins, draws, losses, goals for,
08:37against goal difference and points of every team. It's finished 18th, and this is what they look like.
08:43Eight wins, nine draws, 21 defeats, 39 goals scored, 67 conceded, minus 28 goal difference,
08:50and only 32 points. Now obviously, the real Manchester United, they're okay. Even if they lose the next two,
08:58they've won more games already, they've lost less, their goals four are comparable, but the defense
09:03is much better. Goal difference is miles clear, and they've got seven points of breathing room.
09:08But, those two extrapolated Ruben Amirim teams, less so. The team that's still got two games to play,
09:17only one less loss. Goals conceded is a lot closer, and they're only two points ahead of them. But then,
09:25use the model where they do lose the last two games. They're only one point above the average
09:3318th place team. They have more losses, nearly as many goals conceded. That is, and I say this in
09:40every video at some point, fucking nuts. And finally, and yeah, admit me this is just straight into the
09:46realms of making stuff up because I think it sounds interesting, right? Do you know what everyone's
09:50saying that the last two years have been real sort of low points for promoted sides? They're never
09:55normally as bad collectively as they have been. If you were to remove Ipswich and Luton from the data
10:03here, they jumped from being fractionally worse than Manchester United to fractionally better. And as
10:10ever, to put this all into one nice neat little soundbite you can say in the pub or stick in a
10:15WhatsApp group and pretend you came up with, right? Prior to the last two seasons, the average number
10:21of points the 18th place team got in the Premier League was 34, and over an entire season, Ruben Amirim's
10:29points per game is less than that. So what's the point I'm trying to make with this video? Well,
10:36just put really simply, if we'd had a normal relegation battle in the context of the last 10
10:41years, Man United would not only be in it, they would be in deep, deep shit. And I'd say it for
10:49like the 10th time in this video, while this is purely hypothetical on my part and thus very easy
10:55to dismiss as total bollocks if you want to, it does also literally prove that if they carry this form
11:03over into next season, don't improve, and whichever teams come up, Leeds, Sheffield United, Burnley,
11:10whoever, just simply return to a usual performance, they could go down. Man United.
11:19Now, do I think that will happen? Absolutely not. I really like Ruben Amirim, I love the style of
11:25football he plays, and I think if he is able to bring in the kind of players that'll sue it,
11:30they'll just fly back up the table. But right now, those are ifs. But Manchester United fans,
11:38if you did somehow sit through all of that, what do you think? Is he actually the problem? Do you
11:43want rid of him as soon as possible? Does winning the Europa League and getting back into the Champions
11:47League and plus adding elite level fixture congestion to this problem, does that fill you
11:53with dread, with joy, all thoughts and feelings? I love dearly to read them in the comments below.
11:58You get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y. Please, if you have not already,
12:03subscribe to us here at ACFC. I can taste hitting 100k before the end of the season, but it's
12:10it's close. It won't happen unless you physically click the thing, so please do click the thing.
12:15We're running the hackney half. Christ, this week, the donation link is down below. It's for
12:19Khan, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, a suicide prevention charity here in the UK,
12:22who do very, very, very important work, but until next time, that's it. I can't believe I spent my
12:30Sunday night doing that, but more than that, I can't believe what I found out. Wow. Goodbye.
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