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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