Man Utd vs Chelsea
©TM/IMAGO
Manchester United take on Chelsea in the Premier League on Saturday afternoon in a match that could truly go either way. Although this fixture may have been considered a clash of titans once upon a time, neither club has had an easy run of it in recent years and while their bank balances certainly suggest they’re still part of English football’s elite clubs, their performances on the pitch would perhaps indicate otherwise. In many ways both Man Utd and Chelsea have come to represent the league’s most underperforming clubs when it comes to money spent in the transfer market and the apparent lack of results that failed to follow.
Although Chelsea haven’t won at Old Trafford since 2013, Enzo Maresca’s side remain under a degree of pressure to prove their worth this weekend, following another busy summer window that saw the London club spend €339 million on new players. And while the Stamford Bridge boss should be granted a degree of patience to settle in his new players, tepid draws to Crystal Palace and Brentford in the league and a 3-1 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League hints at a tricky season to come.
However, Maresca isn’t in nearly as much trouble as his counterpart at Man Utd. After spending €251m on new players in the summer, much was expected of Rúben Amorim’s new-look team, but to date the Old Trafford club have managed just one win in their first five games, which has included two defeats and getting knocked out of the League Cup by Grimsby Town on penalties. Reports in England have already suggested that Amorim could lose his job if results don’t improve quickly, but when we look back at Man Utd’s recent history we can see that they, as well as Chelsea, have often struggled to match big investments in the transfer market with success in the Premier League.
€4.37b spent without a single Premier League title
Indeed, when we take a look back to when both clubs last one the Premier League we can see where the issues perhaps began. For example, as the graphic above illustrates, Chelsea won the Premier League title more recently – when Antonio Conte won the league in his first season at the club in the 2016/17 season – and since then they’ve spent €2.06 billion on new players. But while Man Utd’s last league title was in Sir Alex Ferguson’s last season at the club in the 2012/13 campaign, we can see that the Old Trafford club have spent a very similar amount of money on new players since then. And what’s perhaps most damning for both clubs is that their points per game average in the English top-flight since their last league titles is almost identical, with Chelsea slightly ahead of Man Utd by 0.01 points per game more.
The completely inability of either club to buy their way to the top of the league table is only made even more apparent when we tally up every point won in the Premier League in the last 10 seasons prior to this current one and compare the top 10 best performing clubs to the money each club spent on new players in that time. As we can see, Chelsea sit fourth and Man Utd sit sixth for total points, but when it comes to money spent the Stamford Bridge side have outspent all others with a remarkable sum of €2.5b spent on new players, while Man Utd come third to Manchester City with €1.78b spent.
In stark contrast, Tottenham have won more points than Man Utd and sit just behind Chelsea by just eight points, despite spending €510m less than the former and €1.24b less than the latter. But that pales in comparison to the success of Arsenal and Liverpool, who have spent considerably less than both Man Utd and Chelsea but have outperformed both clubs by some distance in the Premier League over the course of the last 10 seasons. The only club that have come close to Chelsea’s spending and indeed spent more than Man Utd are Man City, but as we can see they’ve managed to couple that with unprecedented success, winning six of the last 10 league titles in the English top-flight.
We can then take a look at how this vast over-spending from both clubs breaks down on a season-by-season basis when we consider each club’s cost-per-point average (i.e the total cost of each squad in transfer fees divided by points won in the league) in the table above. As we can see, while Man Utd have perhaps been the more notable fallen giant in the league, their cost-per-point average over the five seasons prior to this one has often been entwined with Chelsea’s and their five-year average is actually lower than the Stamford Bridge club’s own average. And, as we can see from the league average in white, both clubs have far underperformed compared to the league as a whole.
Of course, both clubs would argue that their spending has brought plenty of success. Since their last league title Man Utd have won four domestic cups and the Europa League, while Chelsea have won the FA Cup once but no less than three European titles, with the Champions League success in 2021 undoubtedly being a highlight in the club’s entire history. But when it comes to the Premier League, both clubs have been severely underperforming for a number of years now. Perhaps Maresca or Amorim can change that this season, but the numbers would suggest that it will take a heroic effort from either club to get back to winning league titles anytime soon.