“I am not naive. We need to survive now. We are the worst team, maybe, in the history of Manchester United,” Ruben Amorim declared after watching Brighton beat his shambolic side 3-1 at Old Trafford on Sunday. “I know you want headlines, but I am saying that because we have to acknowledge that and to change that. Here you go: your headlines.”
It was Amorim’s seventh defeat out of 15 games in all competitions since he replaced Erik ten Hag as head coach in November, and it leaves United withering down in 13th in the table. Last season’s eighth-place finish was the club’s worst-ever showing in the Premier League, but that record will almost surely be broken as they now sit 10 points adrift of current occupants Aston Villa.
United are the same number of points above 18th-placed Ipswich Town, who along with Leicester City and Southampton, are setting arguably the lowest standard for a newly promoted trio the competition has ever seen. For that reason, the Red Devils should be spared the ultimate humiliation of relegation, but that will be scant comfort to a fanbase that is becoming more disillusioned by the day.
Amorim’s damning assessment was not an exaggeration, but his subsequent admission that “everybody here is underperforming” was a major understatement. This United squad is rotten from top to bottom, and the players must be held accountable for dragging a once great club down into a footballing hellscape from which there appears to be no return.