As the 2022/23 Premier League season approaches, also marking the beginning of yet another managerial reign at Manchester United, many fans are justifiably worried whether appropriate funds will be spent to reinforce a squad in dire need of an overhaul. In this context, there is a familiar trope of managers “not being backed”, despite their achievements, most notably Mourinho having finished second in 2017/18.
Indeed, when considered over a fifteen year period, there has been notable variability in United’s and our closest rivals’ (Manchester City and Liverpool) final league position. However, while our rivals have become more consistent in their top flight finishes after Sir Alex retired in 2013, we start every season not knowing whether we would finish second or seventh, two outcomes with substantially different financial consequences. On two occasions, once under Mourinho in 2017/18 and once under Solskjær in 2020/21, a second place was achieved and both are often touted if not as successes, than definitely as proof of progress both managers were undertaking.
However, one parameter often overlooked in such assessments is the point tally accompanying standings in the table. When we plot the evolution of the this variable over the same fifteen year period (smoothed with a narrow Gaussian kernel to iron out the “kinks” in the curves, so trends would be more apparent), a different picture emerges. Fleshing this out in numbers, in terms of points total, United were closer to the sixth placed team in 2017/18, than they were to the League winners, and in Solskjær’s three seasons in charge where United finished 6th, 3rd and 2nd, the point tally was 66, 66 and 74, respectively.
The figure plotted above is interesting in several respects. Not only does it clearly demarcate the 2013/14 season as the season Liverpool overtook us as Manchester City’s main title rivals, mimicking each other’s outputs even in non-title-winning seasons, but it also graphically presents that which numbers have clearly been saying: there has been little, if any, progress since Sir Alex retired and our end product across 9 years and 6 different managers can best be described by the word consistent. In my view this is most clear during Solskjær’s reign where 66 points earned us first a sixth, and then a third place finish. In other words, a similar kind of form, with a similar kind of resulting point tally, resulted in a wildly different league standing, obviously principally because other teams competing for the same places had been inconsistent across these seasons. In other words, United’s fortune has had more to do with issues other teams have had around us, than our own form and progress.