After another loss, Ruben Amorim seemed to accept Manchester United are in a fight to avoid relegation. So, how realistic is the prospect of them ending 2025 in the Championship?
Manchester United’s outlook has never been bleaker in the Premier League era.
Sure, much of the past 11 and a half years – since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement – has been a struggle when compared to the preceding glory days, but the club head into 2025 having seemingly been engulfed by a sense of misery not experienced since the early 1970s.
Relegation is the doom-evoking word that’s suddenly swirling around Old Trafford like the ghost of United’s successful past, with Monday’s 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle the game that seemed to snap the club out of their prior immortality.
However bad United have been during their gloomiest days since Ferguson left, the thought of relegation has never been anything more than the mere fanciful pipedream of those who hated them.
But now? Now it’s being openly spoken about as a “possibility” by United’s own head coach. After the loss to Newcastle, Ruben Amorim said he found it “embarrassing to be Manchester United coach and to lose a lot of games”, with that their fourth in a row in all competitions.
To anyone who didn’t watch the match, a 2-0 defeat to a potentially very good Newcastle team may not sound like a cataclysmic event, but the manner of United’s performance in the first 35 minutes or so was truly shocking; their visitors ran them ragged, with the aging midfield pairing of Casemiro and Christian Eriksen unable to cope, and Joshua Zirkzee hooked to ironic cheers after just 33 minutes.
Kobbie Mainoo’s introduction from the bench at that point did result in a slight improvement, but it was merely a case of damage limitation. The game was already gone, with that first half-hour or so laying bare the deficiencies in the squad that ultimately had Manchester United’s coach discussing “the fight [against] relegation” in his post-match press conference.
So, how much of a threat is the possibility of relegation for Man Utd?
What the Opta Supercomputer Says
In the up-to-date, real Premier League table, United are 14th after 19 games with 22 points. It obviously makes for dismal viewing from the club’s perspective considering the eye-watering sums shelled out to build their squad.
They have a cushion of seven points separating them from the bottom three after Ipswich Town recorded a surprising 2-0 win over Chelsea on Monday.
Seven points doesn’t sound like much, but it generally takes a club in the bottom three much longer to amass points than it does other teams – that’s why they end up in the relegation zone in the first place.
With this in mind, the Opta supercomputer isn’t really considering United as candidates for relegation just yet.
In the latest 10,000 simulations conducted by the supercomputer – which you can find a full explainer on here – United are relegated just 0.15% of the time. That’s 15 instances out of a possible 10,000.
Now, we have to acknowledge that one element the supercomputer takes into account is historical team performances. So, West Ham, a place and a point above Amorim’s side, get relegated slightly more often (0.82%) in the 10,000 simulations partly because historically they’ve generally not done as well as United.
Of course, there’s no precedent for the supercomputer to latch on to with respect to Man Utd being in a relegation battle, so this does make the situation a little trickier to read. However, recent performances and upcoming opposition strength are also factored in by the supercomputer, so if push comes to shove and United are dragged into a fight for survival, the numbers aren’t going to be just looking at historical data.
For the time being, then, the Opta supercomputer isn’t getting carried away or influenced by dramatic chatter of relegation (how could it? It’s not sentient).
But if results continue to reduce the gap between them and the bottom three, the Opta supercomputer might become the instigator of relegation fears.
Historical Precedents and What the Numbers Say
With half the season left, there’s obviously still a long way to go. In fairness to Amorim, he said almost a month ago now that a “storm” was coming for United – perhaps he’ll figure out how to get them through this difficult spell, and if he does, the concerns around relegation will disappear quickly.
But the worrying thing for United at the moment is they’re averaging just 0.88 points per game under Amorim. If they were to continue picking up points at that measly rate for the rest of the season, they’d only amass a total of 39.
Clearly such a figure is highly speculative at this point, but no more so than a fan backing them to finish in the top half. If United were to only get 39 points in a full season, it’d be comfortably their lowest in the Premier League era, and it’s not a total that could guarantee safety.
Since the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams for the 1995-96 season, there have been six teams suffer relegation having accumulated 39 or more points.
Granted, one of those – Middlesbrough in 1996-97 – were deducted three points, but even if that had not happened Coventry City would have gone down with 41 points anyway. Sunderland were relegated the same season with 40 points. The others to suffer this fate were Bolton Wanderers (40 pts, 1997-98), West Ham (42 pts, 2002-03), Birmingham City (39 pts, 2010-11) and Blackpool (39 pts, 2010-11).
Since 2010-11, however, teams have generally gone down with significantly fewer points.
From 1995-96 through to the end of 2010-11, relegated teams have averaged 31.9 points over a full season, whereas that figure is just 28.8 points since the start of 2011-12.
Then, if we look more recently, relegated teams have averaged only 26.6 points since the start of 2018-19. Of course, there are some teams that bring the average down considerably by themselves, such as Sheffield United (16 pts) last season or Huddersfield Town (16 pts) in 2018-19, but there’s still a trend that it generally requires fewer points to avoid relegation in modern times.
New Year, New Low
Man Utd will begin the new year 14th in the table; it’s a new low, having never started a year lower than seventh in the Premier League.
Looking back through Premier League history, there have been eight instances of teams starting New Year’s Day 14th or higher and going on to be relegated.
Six of those occurred during 38-game seasons, the most recent of which was in 2013-14.
Norwich City were 14th on New Year’s Day 2014, but by the end of the season had dropped into the bottom three and returned to the Championship.
Burnley (2009-10) and Newcastle (2008-09) are the other two sides to begin the year in 14th before succumbing to relegation come the season’s end – though Blackpool (eighth, 2010-11), Reading (13th, 2007-08) and Sunderland (13th, 1996-97) have all begun years higher and suffered relegation at the conclusion of 38-game campaigns.
But, back to the point made earlier about a seven-point cushion being more significant towards the bottom of the table, no team in a 38-game Premier League season has ever been as many as seven points clear of the relegation zone on New Year’s Day and gone on to be relegated.
So, having taken everything into consideration, in reality, it’s highly unlikely United will be relegated to the Championship in 2025.
But their malaise is so unusual – unprecedented, even – and fascinatingly grim for a club of their size that it’s difficult to ignore even the slightest chance of such a fate.
Much more needs to happen for Amorim’s side to be considered in a perilous position.
But for the first time in the Premier League era, Manchester United don’t appear immune to the fate of so-called lesser clubs.
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