Manchester United and Chelsea, two clubs in states of mutual malfunction

Over the weekend, a Sky Sports graphic exposed the limitations of Manchester United under their manager, Erik ten Hag.

It detailed the team’s away record against sides positioned in the top nine of the Premier League as of Sunday evening. It detailed one draw and 10 defeats from 11 matches against Brentford, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle, Tottenham, and Brighton. The graphic actually omitted a further result — the 1-0 defeat at ninth-placed West Ham United in May. Taken together, it is a single point from those 12 Premier League matches, nine goals scored and 35 goals conceded, leaving a goal difference of -26. This season in the Premier League, United have scored as many goals as Nottingham Forest, Fulham, and Bournemouth, and less than half the goals of Manchester City, Liverpool, and Aston Villa.

"Is that real? That looks ugly!"

Roy Keane isn't happy with Man Utd's away results against the top 9 ❌ pic.twitter.com/HPjF9PZgQI

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 3, 2023

It is all a devastating reflection on a team that has committed £400million ($505m) to incoming transfers since Ten Hag took over in the summer of 2022. Not even the thunderstorm of injuries, fallouts, scandals and boardroom upheaval can adequately excuse just how meek United often appear in the most demanding fixtures.

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Yet scanning down the list of teams in the Premier League’s top nine, it does require a double take upon realising Chelsea, with a men’s team that collected 21 trophies during the ownership of Roman Abramovich, do not figure in the list at all. Not only that, but Chelsea, who finished last season in 12th place, have not actually been placed above 10th in the Premier League at the end of any gameweek so far this season. Chelsea have failed to win 33 of their past 43 Premier League fixtures, stretching back to October 2022, and they have won only four Premier League home games in 2023.

As such, it is difficult to recall a time in modern memory when Manchester United and Chelsea met one another, as they do on Wednesday evening at Old Trafford, in such a state of mutual malfunction. The issues experienced by both clubs are contrasting in nature, but many supporters remain unconvinced, or despairing, over the trajectory of their sides, who so memorably faced off in a Champions League final in 2008. Only once in Premier League history — in the 2015-16 season — have both United and Chelsea finished a campaign outside of the top four. Yet that prospect is a risk this season and it is little wonder that for rival fans, they have become the Premier League’s comedy clubs. To pundits, they are the perennial crisis clubs.

In the case of United, there is a man promising to ride to the rescue — or at least drive an INEOS Grenadier 4×4 into United’s failing football operations. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire and founder of INEOS, is expected to confirm his minority stake in United before Christmas and, in return, he will be handed the keys to the sporting operations of the club. This brings the promise of fresh energy and investment into a team trapped in a cycle of modest peaks and shattering troughs. Yet any optimism at Old Trafford will be tempered by the continued control of the deeply unpopular Glazer family, who have overseen a decade of excess in the transfer market since Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure while allowing the club’s 113-year-old stadium to fall behind its rivals.

In September, the club’s chief executive, Richard Arnold, addressed an all-staff meeting and hailed “the tremendous progress” of the previous year, arguing that United were “chasing down Manchester City”. Arnold was kept busy in attempting to rectify the many mistakes that had been made before him by his predecessor, Ed Woodward. By the middle of November, Arnold himself had departed the club in a move that had much more to do with the collapse of his relationship with the Glazer family than it did the incoming investment from Ratcliffe. The fog of uncertainty pervades, but the mistrust — between (and sometimes within) the boardroom, staff room, dressing room, dugout and terraces — lingers.

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The thing about football clubs is it is never just one thing, no matter how alluringly straightforward that would be. At United, it is the culture of missteps, the ordinary performance of a club whose mythology insists upon it being extraordinary. So on any given day, the club can splinter into a melee of subplots and melodrama.

It may be dividends withdrawn from a failing enterprise by the club’s owners. Or it may be mishandling the Mason Greenwood situation to the point staff members approach the point of rebellion. Or it may be banning journalists from press conferences. Or it may be as petty as prohibiting the club’s £73million winger Jadon Sancho from using the first-team canteen (he now has his food brought to him in a lunchbox across a walkway and that does not become any less peculiar, no matter how many times you read it).

Or it may be as trivial as Diogo Dalot switching off at the back post. Or as mind-bending as Anthony Martial approaching a testimonial year at Old Trafford. Or as confusing as Ten Hag’s midfield signings spending more time on the bench than on the field. Or Cristiano Ronaldo, the most famous footballer in the world, complaining to Piers Morgan about the club’s swimming pool and gymnasium.

And that’s before we remember how United’s women’s team took advice from their trade union after becoming so exasperated by the state of their training facilities. Or how the catering operation is now under investigation for allegedly serving raw chicken at an event at Old Trafford. Of course, some of these things are very serious and some of these things are very daft, but if how you do anything is how you do everything, then perhaps it explains Manchester United.

This is not to say they do not do anything well, but it usually requires public exposure, either through outspoken interviews or discontented leaks, and then United tend to get around to it only once their rivals have left them firmly in the wing mirrors. The women’s team now have impressive facilities at Carrington, unveiled earlier this season, but they are still playing catch-up to their rivals after only launching a team in 2018. United appointed a director of data science in October 2021, by which time Liverpool’s band of Ivy League-educated physicists had already helped the club to Premier League and Champions League success. Revenues remain strong, but these days it is as much a legacy of a bygone era as anything in the way of innovation by the Glazer family, despite their industry-leading approach to sponsorship in the earlier days of their ownership.

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At Stamford Bridge, the path to progress will not be linear, or instant, and that flies in the face of much of what the Chelsea support came to expect under Abramovich. Under the Russian oligarch, booted out of English football due to UK government sanctions after his country’s invasion of Ukraine, Chelsea were dysfunctionally functional. The rich man at the top wrote the cheques and that often clouded just how Chelsea contradicted so much of the conventional wisdom that we often hear is essential to win trophies.

There were 15 managerial reigns in a world where stability in the dugout is venerated. The club appeared to be run by acolytes of Abramovich, such as Bruce Buck and Marina Granovskaia, rather than the best-in-class searches for executive talent we often report on nowadays. But pockets of the club benefited from clear delegation — most notably the academy and the women’s team. The academy has produced talent including Reece James, Levi Colwill, Mason Mount, Tino Livramento, Fikayo Tomori and Conor Gallagher. Yet that preference to pay now, think later, may come back to bite Chelsea as the Premier League now investigates the club for all manner of alleged misdemeanours under Abramovich’s rule.

Since Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly acquired the club in the summer of 2022, Chelsea have replaced almost every position — and I don’t mean within the playing squad. They have hired a new chief executive, chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief revenue officer, and chief operating officer, with the objective of making the business an elite sporting enterprise. They also have two new sporting directors and a new director of recruitment. There are signs of smartness, most notably how Chelsea, under serious financial fair play restrictions in the summer, dived head-first into the Saudi sales market to offset the wage bill and retrieve funds. Manchester United, by contrast, moved only Alex Telles to Al Nassr and, in a stroke of misfortune of timing, they contrived to allow Ronaldo to leave the club for nothing when he would probably have been worth close to £100m to his Saudi employers had United clung on for another six months.

The sense of a crazed trolley dash that permeated the Chelsea owners’ first year in English football has given way to a semblance of direction, however much scepticism may remain. The 19 players Chelsea have acquired in the current calendar year were all aged 25 or below when signed, so it would be wrong to say Chelsea are a club without a plan. The plan is obvious — we just do not yet know whether it is a winning one. Sure, it does not always appear entirely coherent and few will envy Mauricio Pochettino’s task in attempting to knit together a squad that has been constructed with over £1billion in only three transfer windows, yet somehow remains short of quality in key positions such as goalkeeper, striker and centre-half. This has all been compounded by their ever-growing injury list, which currently includes key players Christopher Nkunku, Wesley Fofana, Ben Chilwell, and Romeo Lavia, among others. The Chelsea owners insist they are patient, but they will also expect returns and it is tempting to wonder just how secure Chelsea will be should they endure more than one further season outside of European competitions.

Back at Old Trafford, it remains unclear just how much Ratcliffe will be able to achieve. The Boehly-Clearlake enterprise has sought to reinvent the entire culture across the operations, business and football departments of the club, but Ratcliffe’s fiefdom is unlikely to extend so far due to his minority stake. He is taking on the most scrutinised tasks, reconstructing the football team and the stadium, but it does not appear his remit, at least in the short term, will encompass much more.

For now, therefore, both clubs are in precarious positions. One club is working on its plan. Another club is waiting for its plan to turn up. But even that won’t guarantee anything because everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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