The thought had always been that it couldn’t happen now. It’s just not possible in modern football that a super-club could be relegated. Manchester United may have gone down in 1974 but it’s not going to happen in 2025. Even when Ruben Amorim said that United were in a relegation battle after Monday’s 2-0 defeat by Newcastle, he was making the point to shock.
And it’s not going to happen now. United will not be relegated. They probably only need 15 points from the second half of the season to be safe and the financial structure of modern football means there are at least three sides worse than them. Yet it’s significant that Amorim could mention relegation without it sounding entirely absurd, revealing that it feels worth doing the calculation, working out what sort of tally might be necessary for United to survive. What has happened at United since Sir Alex Ferguson left feels like thought experiment made flesh: what would it take for the most successful side in English history to go down?
You couldn’t do it quickly. Impatience would have provoked outrage that would have scuppered the project of decline. You’d need a carefully managed process of drift, to allow five wildly different mangers to put together a squad of profound incoherence. You’d have to waste astonishing sums of money on ageing players, players who were never good enough and players whose potential you have extravagantly overestimated, ensuring that profitability and sustainability (PSR) compliance means there can be no mass expenditure to solve the problem.
After years without a sporting director with overarching powers to shape the club, you’d approach the coup de grâce by contriving a situation in which there is suddenly an entire politburo of them, adding a whole new layer of intrigue and confusion. The final stroke of genius would be to appoint a confident ideologue, a widely coveted manager of obvious ability but one who insists on playing a system that somehow, despite the chaotically eclectic nature of the squad, does not suit a single player in it.
United have become the club they would have been if Mel Brooks had written a dark satire about them – with the bonus of a Fall of the House of Usher-style concrete metaphor as Old Trafford, roof collapsing, is infested with mice.
Amorim is the fall guy in all this. It’s not his fault. He took Sporting to the Portuguese league title for the first time in 19 years, a period during which they had flirted with bankruptcy, had ultras invade the training ground and tried to rescind the contracts of various players. If he could turn that around, how hard could United be? The impression on Monday as he gesticulated vainly on the touchline with less than 10 minutes played and United already behind, their midfield gaping, is that he is beginning to get some idea.
This is the Russell Martin problem writ large. Amorim has made great play of his system. He wants to spend this season familiarising the players with it, working out who can thrive and who needs replacing. He will change United without letting it change him; already, though, he must be able to feel the abyss staring back.
Erik ten Hag changed at half‑time in his second match, with United 4-0 down at Brentford; in one sense, his entire United career became damage limitation from that moment. If Amorim acts similarly, if he compromises after such initial dogmatism, what does that say? Does it affect his credibility? Does it admit doubt? Does it mean that players, even if only subconsciously, commit a little less to the revolution, knowing their leader is not quite the unflinching man of faith they had thought?
But if he does not change, what then? United lurch on. Perhaps Bruno Fernandes finds form. Perhaps Amad Diallo produces further sparkling performances. Perhaps André Onana makes some saves and Rasmus Højlund scores some goals. Perhaps they win the FA Cup again or qualify for Europe. But more probably they don’t. The lack of Champions League football, anyway, hits their finances. The PSR system constrains the spending Amorim requires. Defeats, even when the context of the imposition of a new style is understood, gnaw at confidence. Will United really be ready to take off next season?
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More pressingly, does that mean this campaign is written off? Months of watching players flail in a system to which they are unsuited for the sake of a better future? That may continue to be entertaining for the rest of the world, but how are United fans supposed to react, especially at a time when ticket prices have been raised and concessions abolished? Not only will your grandad have to pay full whack to get in, but when he gets there he will be watching what is in effect a glorified training session for tomorrow’s castoffs. Maybe Sir Jim Ratcliffe thinks pensioners will relish the nostalgia of watching the worst United since they were a lad. “Think this is bad, son? You should have been at Palace, December ’72 …”
It’s easy to have sympathy for Amorim. Everything is stacked against him. He is trying to impose his ideas on a dysfunctional side amid a packed calendar. But at the same time, what did he think was going to happen when he paired Casemiro and Christian Eriksen in the middle of midfield against Newcastle? Sure enough, they were overrun, just as they had been at Ipswich in Amorim’s first game in charge.
If this extended public crash course in 3-4-3 is to go on, it must surely do so with more energy in the middle. Equally, while defensive solidity will be the primary aim against Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday, against lesser sides some means has to be found to release the wing‑backs, whose surges are necessary not just in themselves but to unlock the wide forwards.
But those are details. Diogo Dalot’s positioning is not the reason United have just had their worst month since 1930. This is what a decade of mismanagement leads to, and it will not be overturned by a fancy new formation alone. This is no longer about simple solutions, about the shape or the manager – it’s about the long-term overhaul of everything at the club. And that could take years.
Source: theguardian.com
