Manchester United are running out of ways to avoid having their worst season in more than three decades.
Sunday’s FA Cup fifth-round defeat by Fulham on penalties at Old Trafford has left the Red Devils with only one remaining shot at silverware in 2024/25: the Europa League, in which their campaign continues with a last-16 first-leg trip to Real Sociedad on Thursday.
Domestically, meanwhile, having gone out of both cup competitions, the best Ruben Amorim’s side can realistically hope for is a top-half Premier League finish.
Ahead of the visit of high-flying Arsenal to Old Trafford on Sunday, United are languishing in 14th in the table. They’ve not finished in the bottom half of the top flight since the 1989/90 campaign, when they placed 13th under Sir Alex Ferguson (things got a bit better after that…).
The Arsenal clash is United’s first of 11 remaining Premier League games in 2024/25 and, as their current position would suggest, they enter it in less-than-ideal shape.
From their last 11 league outings, United have collected just 11 points from a possible 33, with two of their three wins in that period coming against teams in the bottom three: Southampton and Ipswich.
Were they to continue in that vein, the Red Devils would end the season on 44 points, their worst return since 1973/74, when they were relegated from the old First Division under Tommy Docherty with 32 points (which, when converted from the old two-points-for-a-win system to three points for a win, works out at 42 points).
In any case, United seem likely to post their worst points tally in the Premier League era. They need to average almost 2.3 points per game from here on in just to equal their previous worst of 58 in 2021/22.
That is to say, they would need to win at least seven games between now and the end of the season – almost as many as they’ve won in the league so far this term (9).
With Arsenal and Champions League-chasing Nottingham Forest, Manchester City and Newcastle among their opponents in the next five matches alone, it would be no great surprise if the above had become an impossibility by mid-April.
United’s immediate focus must be on laying a solid first-leg foundation against Real Sociedad – going all the way and winning the Europa League for the second time in their history would secure Champions League qualification for 2025/26 – but their FA Cup exit has only brought into even sharper focus the undeniably sorry state of affairs in which they find themselves right now.
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