Manchester United might need to sack Ruben Amorim, sell Bruno Fernandes, replace Andre Onana and induce a global pandemic to meet their targets next season.
Despite slugging it out with Europa League final opponents Spurs to see who can embarrass themselves the most domestically, 16th-placed Manchester United have set themselves the objective of a top-six finish in 2025/26.
Every Premier League club has been set a target for next season but that seems like one of the more outlandish examples.
Only five times in the history of 20-team Premier League campaigns has a side improved their league position by 10 places from one season to the next. Nottingham Forest will make that a half-dozen soon enough, but what lessons can Manchester United take from the past?
Aston Villa (from 16th in 2002/03 to 6th in 2003/04) – changed managers“I had another year left on my contract and I was under no pressure to resign as Aston Villa manager,” said Graham Taylor. “But I have become increasingly unhappy at how the club as a whole was run,” he added, never naming infamous chairman Doug Ellis but leaving little doubt as to his reasoning either.
Having broken his managerial retirement after nine months at the beck and call of a panicking Villa in February 2002, Taylor should perhaps have consulted predecessor John Gregory about the business practises of his new boss.
But Taylor was lured back to the West Midlands in what he would later state he always knew was a “transitional” role. A record of 19 wins from 60 games saw Villa lurch from 8th one season to 16th in his first and only full campaign, before a jump back up to 6th under his replacement.
David O’Leary had been out of work for a year after leaving trophyless Leeds, but an exciting crop of Villa academy graduates dovetailed wonderfully with the experience of Dion Dublin, Ronny Johnsen, Nolberto Solano and Juan Pablo Angel to turn relegation battlers into European qualification contenders.
The lesson for Manchester United? Make Ruben Amorim quit; he genuinely doesn’t seem far off anyway.
Everton (from 17th in 2003/04 to 4th in 2004/05) – sold best player“I sold Wayne Rooney and Everton got better,” was how David Moyes allayed any concerns West Ham might have had over losing prized asset Declan Rice. And frankly it was powerful logic: they avoided relegation by six points with him as their top scorer, Manchester United handed £27m over after Euro 2004 and Everton used those funds to help qualify for the Champions League.
It does skip past a few key points, like the signing of Tim Cahill, the partnership between David Weir and Alan Stubbs and the form of Lee Carsley. But fundamentally Everton improved as a team when they cashed in on their star player.
Only Norwich (3rd in 1992/93) have ever finished higher in the Premier League with a negative goal difference than the Toffees, who scored the same number of goals when finishing 4th as they did to come 17th, while only actually suffering four fewer defeats.
Even when they chucked their new-found transfer weight around it backfired, but without Rooney at least Thomas Gravesen could finally spread his wings.
The lesson for Manchester United? Sell Bruno Fernandes, and maybe sign Marcus Bent.
Fulham (from 17th in 2007/08 to 7th in 2008/09) – signed competent keeperIt remains one of the more unlikely relegation escapes in Premier League history, perhaps a little lost in the mire of Derby selfishly and simultaneously recording their Apocalypse Season.
Fulham were already 18th and in trouble when they appointed Roy Hodgson as Lawrie Sanchez’s successor in December 2007. But their struggle to build any momentum left them in this spot heading into the final straight:
The Cottagers then trailed Manchester City 2-0 within 21 minutes of the first of those three must-win games. Yet they did precisely that, Diomansy Kamara capping a ludicrous comeback in stoppage time at the Etihad before Birmingham and Portsmouth were felled for no apparent reason.
Fulham’s eagerness to avoid a similar scenario meant a substantial summer spend, with Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora, John Paintsil and Zoltan Gera among those signed. But it was free agent Mark Schwarzer, released by Middlesbrough, who rejected Juventus and Bayern Munich to move to west London.
Perhaps a full pre-season of Hodgson’s double training sessions of two banks of four was actually the decisive factor but Fulham went from conceding 60 goals in 2007/08 to letting in only 34 in 2008/09, fewer than Arsenal and indeed every team bar the top three, with Schwarzer equalling a record for most clean sheets in a Premier League season for the Cottagers which still stands.
The lesson for Manchester United? It’s not great news for Andre Onana.
Leicester (from 14th in 2014/15 to 1st in 2015/16) – changed managers but also signed probably the league’s best player from France’s mid-tableThere is little point in trying to dilute and replicate any element of Leicester’s title-winning season, but also Manchester United should probably sack Amorim after his son is embroiled in a racist sex tape scandal before appointing a likeable but ill-suited manager, being widely tipped for relegation and capitalising on the collective bed-soiling of the usual contenders.
It might also be an idea to identify one of the most effective players in Premier League history, going entirely unnoticed in Ligue Un at a ludicrously low price. Leicester, unbeknownst to everyone including themselves, already had most of the pieces in place to win the title, but N’Golo Kante, a £5.6m signing from Caen, made director of football Steve Walsh perhaps the sport’s most coveted man.
Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? And does Nigel Pearson calling a journalist an ostrich trigger a series of events which culminates in Andrea Bocelli belting out Nessun Dorma at a disbelieving King Power Stadium?
The lesson for Manchester United? Appoint Claudio Ranieri and raid Toulouse.
West Ham (from 16th in 2019/20 to 6th in 2020/21) – stopped playing in front of fansWhile the instinct is to wipe the entire sorry saga from memory, those months in which Jesse Lingard and Tomas Soucek were the single greatest footballers on earth were at least a novelty. A great many things would not have happened without lockdown and West Ham almost qualifying for the Champions League is chief among them.
From the date of the first game without fans in June 2020 to May 2021, when heavy restrictions were still placed on attendance, only five teams accrued more points than West Ham, who trailed Arsenal on goal difference alone.
Considering their plight beforehand it was a ludicrous turnaround. Moyes was again the architect of a huge leap in places but he struggled after replacing Manuel Pellegrini and things only started to click when Michail Antonio was free to chase long balls and run the channels without fear of being chastised by supporters.
The lesson for Manchester United? Be managed by David Moyes and break into some labs in Wuhan.
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