Man United is heading for relegation in the Premier League, ready to play in English League 2

 After Manchester United wrapped up their worst year since the Premier League was created -- just 51 points in 2024! -- new manager Ruben Amorim decided to take it a step further.

"I think people are tired of excuses in this club and I think sometimes I talk about relegation because of that," he said after the year-end loss to Newcastle. "We have to acknowledge our position the way you see the league, that everybody can beat everybody, so we have to win games and to focus on surviving. I think our club needs a shock, you know? It needs a shock and we have to understand that."

Man United, of course, followed that up with a 2-2 draw away to league leaders and eternal rivals Liverpool. And they then knocked Arsenal out of the FA Cup on penalties. Those results suggest there might be better things just around the corner -- but at the same time, a draw is worth only a point, and a single point only goes so far for a team in a relegation battle. Even with these games, Man United sit seven points above the bottom three in the Premier League table.

So, are United actually at risk of relegation? Mark Ogden and Ryan O'Hanlon have teamed up to take stock of where the club are, what the historical context for United's struggles might be, and what would have to happen for the team with the most Premier League titles to fall out of the top flight.

A historically bad Premier league season with relegation precedent

Manchester United are the most successful team of the Premier League era, winning 13 titles since the competition began in 1992-93. Until the retirement of manager Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, the team had never finished a Premier League season lower than third.

Even throughout the turbulent decade since Ferguson stepped down after 27 years in charge, United's lowest final position was the eighth-place finish under Erik ten Hag last season.

To place that into context, of United's Big Six rivals, Liverpool are the only other side never to have finished outside the top 10, with their lowest position also eighth, in 2012-13 and 2015-16. Arsenal (12th), Chelsea (14th), Tottenham (15th) and Manchester City (relegated 1996 and 2001) have all recorded bottom-half finishes during the Premier League era.

Relegation for the biggest clubs in the Premier League simply doesn't happen anymore. United were last relegated in 1974, but Arsenal (1913) and Liverpool (1954) have even longer unbroken stretches in the top flight. Tottenham last suffered relegation in 1977, while Man City and Chelsea -- mid-ranking clubs until bought by wealthy owners during the 2000s -- were most recently relegated in 2001 and 1988 respectively.

So, Man United have nothing to worry about, right? Well despite a morale-boosting 2-2 draw against Liverpool at Anfield in their last Premier League game -- a result which ended a sequence of three successive league defeats without scoring -- United are in the midst of their worst league season, having already hit a series of dismal lows.

The team ended 2024 with just 51 points during the calendar year -- their lowest Premier League calendar year tally by a margin of seven points -- and it was the worst haul since Ferguson's team managed 50 points in 1989.

United's six losses in December were the most suffered by the club during a calendar month since September 1930, and they conceded 18 goals, tying the most they've allowed from March 1964.

Having replaced the fired Ten Hag in November, Amorim earned the dubious distinction of recording the worst start by a United manager for 103 years after a 2-0 home defeat against Newcastle on Dec. 30. The loss left the Portuguese coach with five defeats in eight league games and prompted him to say that relegation was a possibility for the club.

So, how realistic is the prospect of relegation? It remains unlikely, simply due to United's resources, fanbase and underperforming players who might come good. Plus, there's the fact they face bottom-club Southampton on Jan. 16 with enough distance between themselves and the relegation zone to feel confident enough that they will soon banish talk of the drop.

But all of the above, aside from the points cushion, applied during the winter of the season 1973-74 season in the old First Division -- then the top flight of English football. United had been crowned European champions in 1968, a year after winning the league title, becoming the first English club to win the European Cup/Champions League in doing so. But by 1973-74, they were in a tailspin towards relegation.

Let's just think about that time scale: less than six years. For a modern-day comparison, United's situation in 1973-74 would be like Liverpool being in a relegation battle this season having won the Champions League in 2019. On New Year's Day 1974, United lost 3-0 away to Queens Park Rangers and dropped into the bottom three. By mid-January, they had dropped another position, to second bottom.

After their New Year's Day defeat, The Times reported that United resembled "a team of rags and tatters largely devoid of understanding or confidence with a defence that resembled a sieve," despite "spending over £1 million on players over the last 18 months."

Sound familiar? An expensively assembled squad failing to perform and suffering a series of bad defeats with a porous defence -- that could be Amorim's team right now rather than Tommy Docherty's doomed side in 1974.