Plenty of reasons have been put forward as to why United have done so poorly this year, such as the confused transfer policy of the summer, the loss of key backroom staff, tactical errors and even that the side he inherited simply wasn't good enough. All of these may indeed play their part, but if we are asking simply why United are, at the time of writing, 7th in the League, 10 points off 4th and 17 off top, there is one, clear answer - their results against the teams above them.
As the chart above shows, United have lost the majority of their matches against the teams above them, and won very few. In fact, if we break the chart down and look at the individual results, we can see they have won just ONE league game all season against the 6 teams currently above them. Compare this to their results in general this season:
So let's have a look at their results against the 6 teams above them (Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal, Everton and Tottenham). Note that they do have one game outstanding against this group - a tough trip to Goodison on the 20th April.
That win came all the way back in November in an unconvincing narrow win at home over injury-hit Arsenal. In fact, 4 of United's 6 points above these teams have been at the cost of the Gunners, whose own record against the top teams has come under increasing fire this season. Otherwise the list makes miserable reading - 7 defeats in 11 games, including home losses to Everton, Tottenham and most damning for United fans, Liverpool and City. In fact, both Liverpool and Man City have now done the double over United in the same season - something which had never happened before in the club's history.
Of course, you could argue that the results against the top teams are a poor guide to a team's form. After all, these tend to be the tightest, most competitive fixtures of the year. You would not expect to win all, or even most of these games...right? However, if we look at how the six clubs against United have done in these matches, we can see just how far off the pace Moyes' men have fallen.
As we can see, Manchester City and Chelsea lead the way in terms of average points per game in matches against the other teams in the top 7. Both average over 2 points per game, closely followed by Liverpool (who average just under 2). There is then a major gap down to Arsenal and Everton, who have obtained around one point per game in these fixtures. Tottenham are 6th, as they are in the league, with an average of 0.75, while United languish in last. Their average is a quarter of that managed by City and Chelsea, picking up just one point for every TWO games against top 6 sides. This, more than anything else, has decided their league position. If we plot the total points all seven teams have amassed this season, this becomes obvious.
As we can see, United have done about as well against the other 13 teams as the clubs above them. In fact, if we extrapolate the average points per game in this set of matches, then multiply over 38 to represent a full season, the league table would look like this:
This is a fascinating table,with United being within two results of the title just one of the surprising results. In fact, we can take three separate conclusions from this.
- United would be far more competitive at the top end of the Premiership if they could just improve their results against the "big" clubs.
- Tottenham, Everton and particularly Arsenal fans can also say the same. It would seem that the comments about Arsene Wenger choking in the biggest matches does have some truth in it after all.
- Manchester City and Chelsea have done very well against their closest rivals. Again, a common belief among followers of the Premiership is that Mourinho is the man for the big matches, and this is clearly the case - without their excellent form against the top teams, the Blues would be struggling to contend for even a Europa League place.
All of these conclusions lead us back to the same point - results against the top six are clearly crucial to Premiership success. In the next post, I will use these statistics to go further and try and predict who will win this year's title based on this system. Until then however, we have one more set of charts to look at. How does Moyes' woeful record against the top six stack up with Sir Alex's?
The most obvious comparison, this season vs last season, is also the easiest. The same seven clubs (albeit in a very different order) comprised the top seven places, thus we compare directly between the two sets of results. As we can see, United did particularly well against the other 12 clubs (only drawing 3 and losing 1 of these 24 matches) but also had a healthy average of 1.67 points per game against the big clubs. In fact, Sir Alex's record against top teams in the league was very similar if we look further back.
The third column represents an average of Fergie's last 5 years in charge, so from 2008 until 2013. Each season was calculated separately based on the top 7 that year. In fact, the top 7 has been so consistent in recent years this just meant Newcastle rather than Liverpool in 2011/12, Villa instead of Everton in 2009/10 and Villa and Fulham (!) in place of City and Spurs back in 2008/09. Again, the average is that United would pick up around 1.67 points per game against their main league rivals. Put another way, in 6 games against the top clubs, we would expect three United wins and a draw, with two defeats (or two wins, three draws and one defeat). Under Moyes, the statistical expectation would be one or two draws and four or five defeats.
Finally we have Sir Alex's first full season in charge of United (I thought this was a fairer measure than the season he took over in November 1986, as David Moyes had the preseason to recruit and prepare). That season, United finished second behind Liverpool. Everton and Arsenal were the other top seven clubs both then and now, joined by current Championship sides QPR and Notts Forest, and Wimbledon. United actually played two more games that season than in the Premier League earlier, as the division was made up of 21 clubs for that year only (part of an unsuccessful experiment to get down to 20 teams). Sadly for United's current manager, Sir Alex still did just as well against this top seven, which was instrumental in United achieving 2nd place, despite relatively poor performance against the clubs lower down the table.
As I stated above, return on Friday for an attempted prediction for this season's title race!
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