Ruben Amorim was wrong - but pound for pound, Manchester United are the worst team in the world | OneFootball

Ruben Amorim was wrong. And if there may be a broader concern that Amorim is wrong, in trying to impose a system on a group of players who look ill-suited to it, on trying to change too much too soon, in simply being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, his assessment of a floundering Manchester United was incorrect.

“We are the worst team maybe in the history of Manchester United,” he said, adding a flourish. “Here you go: your headlines.” And when the manager makes that admission, the headlines follow. Where they might have been about a 3-1 Old Trafford defeat to Brighton, they take on a wider status. They become a greater statement of failure.

Amorim may have failed the history test. His United are set to prove their worst team in the Premier League era. By some distance, too. “You are getting a new coach who is losing more than the last coach,” he said. “Imagine that.” It seemed as though Erik ten Hag had bottomed out for United by taking them to eighth, their lowest Premier League finish. Now Amorim’s United, if hampered by Ten Hag’s start, are 10 points off eighth. They are averaging a point a game under the Portuguese, 11 in 11, and their recent record is still worse, with four in the last six.

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Amorim said his United team are the worst in the club’s history (Getty Images)

But the worst in their history? Newton Heath, as they then were, earned just 14 points in 1893-94; like this team, they lost six of their first 12 home league games. United were dismal for most of the 1930s. They conceded 115 goals while getting relegated in 1931-32. Two years later, they came 20th: in Division 2, barely escaping demotion to Division 3 North. The season the late, great Denis Law joined, they finished 19th in Division 1, albeit salvaging it with FA Cup victory and when the club was rebuilding from the Munich Air Disaster. They were relegated in 1973-74, six years after winning the European Cup: Alex Stepney and Brian Kidd, two of those who starred in the 1968 final and laid wreaths for Law, were among those who went down. Sir Alex Ferguson, another of those paying tribute, led United to 13th in 1989-90, though that season’s FA Cup win was the catalyst for a spell of unprecedented success.

Ferguson retired with 22 consecutive top-three finishes, the first of them when Amorim was only seven years old. That forms the backdrop to his doom-laden appraisal. For generations, the worst-case scenario was third: later the depths of sixth, seventh or eighth that the post-Ferguson managers explored. But then the whole framework of football has changed. United have had a size and a grandeur for much of their history, certainly since Sir Matt Busby’s appointment in 1945, and greater resources than most of their peers.

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Amorim did not try to escape the blame for United’s struggles (Getty Images)

But underachievement felt capped in the era of the superclub: they were too rich to truly fail. Until, perhaps, United do now. When, in the December defeat to Newcastle, Gary Neville branded them "pound for pound, the worst football team in the country," he was, if anything, underselling it. Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, euro for euro, United are arguably the worst team in the world. Only the Todd Boehly Chelsea of 2022-23 can compete to be the worst in English football history; they came 12th, again breaking the law that the elite could not drop below eighth.

As Brighton surged to victory at Old Trafford, with a goal from the £3m buy Kaoru Mitoma, with the £5.2m recruit Yasin Ayari excelling in midfield, the £900,000 bargain Joel Veltman at right-back and the £1.8m arrival Jan Paul van Hecke also in a defence with the homegrown Lewis Dunk, United fielded a starting 11 who cost around £430m. Liverpool’s team at Brentford on Saturday came for a similar price, but they are the league leaders. United’s bench cost almost £300m on top of that, even if Antony and Casemiro account for half of it.

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Brighton continued their recent dominance over Manchester United with a third consecutive win at Old Trafford (Getty Images)

None of the fees are Amorim’s fault; none of the expenditure came on his watch, though the head coach himself cost £9m in compensation. United’s squad, according to the CIES Football Observatory, cost more than €1bn, if add-ons are triggered (and perhaps they are doing so badly, they won’t be). It is the second most expensive in world football, behind only Chelsea. Their wage bill last season, meanwhile, reached £364.7m. Those individuals, as Amorim’s comments indicate, are far less than the sum of their parts as a team.

“Everybody here is underperforming,” said Amorim. That is an understatement. They are performing worse, relative to their salaries and price tags, than almost any other team ever. And if some of the numbers reflect players who were overpriced and overrated, whose fees reflect a failure of negotiation and whose arrivals highlight a failure of judgement, there is a historic low nonetheless. Amorim’s comments may have designed as shock therapy. He did not try to escape his share of the blame. But they are a colossal indictment of United, players and managers past and present, the executives responsible for recruitment, and owners.