Every Manchester United win is the greatest victory you've ever seen. Every Manchester United loss is the most embarrassing defeat in the history of sports. That's just how this works.
In other words, Manchester United are the Dallas Cowboys of the Premier League: a franchise that hasn't won anything in forever, but still drives the weekly conversation because of how big they are.
United haven't seriously challenged for a Premier League or Champions League title in nine years, and they've only finished in the top four in four of those nine seasons. But despite all of that, they still led all Premier League clubs (at least the ones that aren't currently being investigated for illegally inflating their commercial revenue) in commercial revenue last season. The lack of on-field success has very slowly eroded United's once-massive financial advantage, as both Manchester City (see: previous parenthetical) and Liverpool brought in more revenue last season.
Yet even with a sixth-place league finish last campaign, only three clubs (those two, plus Real Madrid) made more money in 2021-22. There isn't another club in the world who could maintain that kind of global interest after such a comparatively awful decade of performance.
Perhaps, then, it's unsurprising that after a few months of solid performance under first-year manager Erik ten Hag, you've begun to hear the whispers, if not outright shouts: Are Manchester United ... in the title race? They're only five points back of first place!
Let's just get it out of the way: No, no they're not.