If you really squint hard enough, you can do the following. You can see Manchester United, just one game away from their second trophy of the season, about to become the only team in England to play in the final of both domestic cup competitions. You can also see Manchester City who, yes, have already won the Premier League, but who could still lose both the FA Cup and Champions League finals and end the season with only one trophy. Were that to happen, they wouldn't even finish this season as the soccer club with the most trophies in their own city.
Now, while that kind of hardcore squinting is happening only in the darkest corners of the internet and the reddest corners of Manchester, there is a way for this season to wrap up with United seeming like they're on a steadily accelerating upward trajectory and City appearing stagnant, earning only one trophy for all their supposed dominance and with the Premier League's ongoing investigation looming above the club. I'm not saying it will actually be that way, but a kind of momentum-based thinking could have you feeling like it is that way.
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Now, it's certainly true that Manchester United are headed in the right direction. They finished last season with as many goals scored as they conceded. In Erik ten Hag's first season with the club, they're all the way back up to third, locked into the 2023-24 Champions League, and one game away from the FA and League Cup double. But how far away are they from City? How long until they challenge for a title? And how much of the current squad will still be around whenever it happens again?
How far are they from City?
When we talk about "better" in soccer, we basically mean "who would be favored if these two teams played a game on a neutral field?" Or: How often would we expect each team to win if they played, say, 100 games on a neutral field?
Luckily, Manchester United and Manchester City are about to play a game on a neutral field and for the most accurate, publicly available estimation of team strength, we can look to the betting markets. The bookies' odds aren't perfect, of course, but they're going to be better than anything you or I can come up with.
Ahead of Saturday's FA Cup final, Caesars Sportsbook puts City at minus-350 to lift the trophy and United at plus-260. Bet $350 on City to win $100, bet $100 on United to win $260. Converted to break-even percentages, that would be 77.8 for City and 27.8 for United. (Those of you who were paying attention in third grade math will notice that 77.8 and 27.8 add up to something greater than 100. Those extra percentage points are the hold or the vig placed by the sportsbook -- essentially the fee you're being charged to place the bet. This is how the books make money.)
OK, we're too far afield now. Using the odds calculator from the site Unabated, we can figure out what the true odds are by removing the hold, and that comes out to 73.68% for City and 26.32% for United. To simplify it, let's just say that if these two teams played on a neutral field 100 times, we would expect Manchester City to win 74 of those games.
To contextualize that number, we can look back to the last time City played a winner-take-all match on a neutral field -- the 2021 Champions League final. According to the site Sports Odds History, City were favored (-260 to +200) over Chelsea. The rounded-up true odds for those lines come out to 68% for City and 32% for Chelsea.
So even though they finished higher in the table, United are significantly farther away from City than Chelsea were two years ago. But in case you're being consumed by a sense of inevitable dread over the outcome of Saturday's game: Chelsea won the 2021 Champions League.
How far are they from a title challenge?
To answer that using only Chelsea as an example: so freaking far. After winning the Champions League, Chelsea comfortably finished in third last year but were still 19 points back of first. Then this year, well, uh, yeah ...
Of course, outside of three Liverpool seasons, everyone has been far from a title challenge since Manchester City won their first Premier League trophy under Pep Guardiola. Even this season's Arsenal, who set the record for most days in first without winning, were all but cooked before the end of April. On the aggregate, it wasn't much of a challenge at all: City still clinched the league with multiple games left to play.
Now, I can't write about Manchester City's dominance without mentioning the 115 alleged financial violations that the Premier League is investigating. Analysis by John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times found that City have outperformed their wage bill by an absurd 15 points per season since 2015. Next-best was Brighton ... at seven points. However, it's still a very open question as to how much of that overperformance is due to Guardiola's managerial excellence and how much of it comes from what the Premier League is currently investigating: allegations that City are spending money outside of the rules and outside of the club's official accounts.
On the other end of the spectrum, United have underperformed their wages by around six points per season -- more than any other ever-present Premier League side. Yet for as poorly as Manchester United have been run since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, I still wouldn't expect them to continue to underperform their resources so badly forever. The same goes for City on the other end -- for a number of reasons. Just by sheer weight of finances, United should compete for a title again, at some point.
How long, then, might it take a team to go from United's current level to a title-ish contender? Through 38 games, United produced a plus-17.61 non-penalty expected goal differential. There's no predictive power in penalties, so outside of the betting markets, that's the best single number we've got for team strength.
Per Stats Perform's database, since 2010 there have been 12 non-United teams who finished a Premier League season with a non-penalty xG differential between plus-15 and plus-20. Let's run through them, in descending order:
- Leicester, 2019-20 (plus-19.63): never challenged for a title, relegated three seasons later
- Liverpool, 2009-10 (plus-19.11): challenged for a title four years later
- Everton, 2012-13 (plus-18.82): never challenged for a title
- Tottenham, 2011-12 (plus-18.81): challenged for a title four years later
- Tottenham, 2021-22 (plus-18.24): TBD, but calling it "never challenged" for now
- Chelsea, 2012-13 (plus-17.12): won the title two years later
- Arsenal, 2016-17 (plus-16.03): challenged for a title six years later
- Leicester, 2015-16 (plus-15.77): literally won the title in this season
- Arsenal, 2021-22 (plus-15.60): challenged for a title the next year
- Wolverhampton, 2019-20 (plus-15.38): never challenged for a title
- Arsenal, 2013-14 (plus-15.35): challenged for a title two years later
- Liverpool, 2015-16 (plus-15.28) challenged for a title three years later
If we eliminate all the clubs outside the Big Six and also remove 2021-22 Tottenham, then we're left with seven teams who eventually challenged for the title. On average, it took them 3.1 years to get there. So, we'll just say that United could reasonably expect to mount a title challenge in three or four years.
Who will be on that team?
To get more specific, the most similar team on that list to the current Manchester United team is 2015-16 Liverpool. Both teams had an exciting new manager, both teams took down one of the best teams in Europe at the time in the Europa League (Borussia Dortmund for Liverpool, Barcelona for Manchester United) and both teams were very much still under construction. Their managers were trying to institute their new ideas, but frequently pushed up against the limitations imposed by the talent at their disposal. Yes, Liverpool finished eighth and United third, but their goal differentials were almost identical and their underlying performances were just about the same.
Among the 15 players who played at least one-third of the minutes for Liverpool in 2015-16, just three of them did the same for the 2018-19 team that gave City a run for their money and won the Champions League: Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Roberto Firmino. While one big difference is that Jurgen Klopp arrived during the season and Ten Hag came in before this season and helped guide a summer of player acquisition, I think that difference is somewhat canceled out by the fact that Klopp's team was significantly younger. The average age of his players, weighted by minutes played, was 25.1, while Ten Hag's team this year averaged out 26.9 years -- eighth-oldest in the league.
The average age of the previous 10 league winners: 27.0. In other words, United have the age profile of a title winner, but a talent profile that suggests that they'll lose to the current title-winning team, 74 times out of 100. So, you can start to see why the three- to four-year horizon makes sense.
The current team, if you kept all of the same players for another year, would already be out of the title-winning age window next season. They'd be older than any team that has won the league in any of the past 10 seasons. And it's not like United can just keep cycling out different players to remain in that 27-year-old average age range each season, year after year. Rather, to get back into title-winning range, they're going to have to get a lot younger and then have those players all age -- and ideally, improve -- together.
Among the 16 guys who featured in at least one-third of the minutes for United this season, eight of them will be in their primes (24 to 28) three years from now. Marcus Rashford (84% of the minutes) will be 27, Diogo Dalot (63%) will be 26, Lisandro Martinez (62%) will be 27, Antony (53%) and Jadon Sancho (49%) will be 25, Aaron Wan-Bissaka (42%) will be 27, Tyrell Malacia (40%) will be 25 and Scott McTominay (34%) will be 28. Of those eight, you can only really be confident that the first two -- Rashford and Martinez -- could be key pieces for a title-winning team. To be generous, let's say three, since Dalot also played more than 60% of the minutes this year.
The specific issue facing United won't be a problem against City, but it will be a problem when it comes to building eventual title contenders. Most of their current key players are either already in their thirties (David de Gea, Casemiro, Christian Eriksen) or will be in their thirties within those next three years. Raphael Varane is 29, while Bruno Fernandes and Luke Shaw are both 27. None of them are going to suddenly get better and raise the team's underlying performance; most of them are going to gradually get worse. So, it's not that none of these players can be part of the next United team that challenges for a title. Rather, it's that most of them won't be.
Manchester United could win the second trophy of the Ten Hag era this weekend. After all, they've already beaten Manchester City once this season. But an FA Cup isn't what the club or the coach or any of the players really care about. And whenever United finally do challenge for the Premier League title again? They'll likely be doing it with a team that looks a lot different from whatever we see Saturday.