Manchester United will play the bare minimum number of games in their shortest season in 111 years. They might as well just go and appoint Roy Hodgson.<\/p>\n
After their humiliation at the hands of Grimsby Town<\/a> in August, and with no European football in their schedule, Manchester United finally delivered some good news to their supporters by confirming this to be the shortest campaign possible.<\/p>\n Brighton beating them in the FA Cup third round at Old Trafford<\/a> means Manchester United will play just 40 games in 2025\/26, a feat achieved only eight times by Premier League clubs since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.<\/p>\n The average final league position of those teams was 15th, which Ruben Amorim dragged Manchester United down to last season and Michael Carrick will be desperately trying to steer clear of for the next few depressing months.<\/p>\n Based on these sorry top-flight clubs who avoided fixture congestion by losing instantly in the cups with no European distractions, they really might as well go for Hodgson as caretaker instead to at least guarantee 14th.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Newcastle, 2021\/22<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Burnley<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Cambridge<\/p>\n Final Premier League position: 11th<\/p>\n That 70-year wait for a trophy rarely felt as interminable as when Newcastle stumbled out of both cup competitions at the first hurdle under two different managers, having been the subject of a \u00a3300m takeover in between.<\/p>\n Steve Bruce made nine changes to a side which had lost their opening two Premier League games, only to fall to Burnley in a penalty shoot-out at St James\u2019 Park.<\/p>\n The same stadium played host to a deeply embarrassing defeat for Eddie Howe<\/a> in only his eighth match in charge when third-tier Cambridge showed up the relegation battlers.<\/p>\n It put off neither Bruno Guimaraes nor Dan Burn, who signed up for the revolution three weeks later. Newcastle might have expected one of those men would ultimately help end the drought<\/a> \u2013 just not that one.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Crystal Palace, 2020\/21<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Bournemouth<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Wolves<\/p>\n Final Premier League position: 14th<\/p>\n There was approximately zero shame attached to Crystal Palace being eliminated at the earliest possible stage of both domestic competitions, first in a penalty shoot-out so protracted it featured Wayne Hennessey briefly dropping his Nazi studies<\/a> to miss in an 11-10 defeat, then by a single goal at Wolves.<\/p>\n If anything, the fans likely welcomed Hodgson\u2019s final season \u2013 at that point \u2013 being restricted to the minimum number of games. After all, Crystal sodding Palace are never going to actually win anything<\/a> so there\u2019s little point in them trying.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Leeds, 2020\/21<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Hull<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Crawley<\/p>\n Final Premier League position:\u00a09th<\/p>\n It does not feel like Leeds supporters would swap a fun but ultimately unsuccessful cup run for what was a wonderful Premier League ride in lockdown.<\/p>\n The trade-off for their highest league finish in almost two decades was a frustrating but harmless shoot-out loss to Hull in the Carabao, then one of the more sizeable shocks in that season\u2019s FA Cup<\/a> when League Two Crawley dumped them on their arse while handing a debut to actual Mark Wright.<\/p>\n Marcelo Bielsa pretended that \u201cthe result generates a lot of sadness and disappointment for us,\u201d but he also literally did not win a single cup tie in six attempts throughout his entire reign so he likely wasn\u2019t particularly perturbed.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Crystal Palace, 2019\/20<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Colchester<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Derby<\/p>\n Final Premier League position: 14th<\/p>\n That is absolutely pure, uncut, textbook Hodgson. The bloke literally engineered successive 40-game campaigns in which Crystal Palace, at the earliest possible opportunity, abandoned any and all hope of distractions from the importance of finishing 14th.<\/p>\n And those losses are far harder to explain away, even if they were inflicted in precisely the same manner of shoot-out exit in the League Cup after a goalless draw, and 1-0 defeat in the FA Cup.<\/p>\n Palace should be thankful that Hodgson never landed the might of Macclesfield in a cup draw<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Cardiff, 2018\/19<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Norwich<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Gillingham<\/p>\n Final Premier League position: 18th<\/p>\n Neil Warnock warned his side not \u201cto be a headline this weekend\u201d ahead of their trip to League One Gillingham, which was perhaps an overestimation of quite how much fanfare another defeat for his struggling side would attract.<\/p>\n The Bluebirds fell to a 1-0 loss at Priestfield Stadium, with Norwich sending them packing before they could even take a sip of that sweet, sweet Carabao.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Huddersfield, 2018\/19<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Stoke<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Bristol City<\/p>\n Final Premier League position:\u00a020th<\/p>\n As if to render any pretence of an advantage in a particularly foregone conclusion of a relegation battle moot, Huddersfield matched Cardiff stride for stride by tripping over their own shoelaces as soon as possible.<\/p>\n They failed to score against either Stoke or Bristol City, a pair of Championship-level cup opponents which felt specifically arranged by the Terriers in an England pre-tournament friendly sort of way where they schedule games against teams from the same continent as their group rivals.<\/p>\n David Wagner was in charge for both, ultimately falling on his sword after a goalless home draw against similarly doomed Cardiff. Jan Siewert completed the job of guiding Huddersfield to one of the earliest Premier League drops ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n West Brom 16\/17<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Northampton<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Derby<\/p>\n Final Premier League position:\u00a010th<\/p>\n Tony Pulis described referee Jon Moss marking out 13 paces instead of 10 for the wall breached by Tom Ince\u2019s match-winning free-kick as \u201cthe breaks you need to get through in cup football\u201d.<\/p>\n One might argue that drawing Steve McClaren\u2019s Derby County in the FA Cup and League One bottom-half dwellers Northampton in the EFL Cup is actually a far better representation of those necessary \u201cbreaks\u201d.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n QPR, 2014\/15<\/p>\n Knocked out of the League Cup by: Burton<\/p>\n Knocked out of the FA Cup by: Sheffield United<\/p>\n Final Premier League position:\u00a020th<\/p>\n \u201cWe gave the lads who haven\u2019t been playing an opportunity to show what they can do, and they showed me what they can do \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t an awful lot,\u201d said Harry Redknapp after he made nine changes to his starting line-up for a cup trip to League Two side Burton.<\/p>\n