Five reasons why Manchester United sacked Erik ten Hag - ESPN

Last season, Manchester United finished in eighth place. Since the breakaway Premier League was formed in 1992, they hadn't ever been any lower. Over 38 games, they conceded one more goal than they scored — also a club-worst in the Premier League era. In fact, the last time a Manchester United team produced a negative goal differential — back in 1990 when we still called it the «First Division» — the Premier League didn't even exist.

For a team with higher revenues than all but four other teams in the world, United almost have to actively try and be this bad in order to be this bad again. And with a new minority owner, billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, taking over the club's football operations, plus Dan Ashworth (who helped rebuild England's national team, Brighton and Newcastle) leading the way in the new front office, perhaps a seventh, sixth, or even fifth-placed finish seemed like it might be on the cards this season.

Well, nine games into this season, United are in 14th. They've conceded three more goals than they've scored, and they still haven't even played against Manchester City, Arsenal, or Chelsea. It's not quite United's worst-ever start — they were minus-3 through nine games in Erik ten Hag's first season; in 2019, they only had 10 points during Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's first season.

In both of those other campaigns, United ended up finishing in the top four. But although we've seen them bounce back from situations like this before, we've never seen them be this bad, for this long. Now they've sacked manager Ten Hag, let's run through five simple numbers that show how the club have reached a new low under his leadership and had to make a change.

We'll start with the simplest one: points per game. The Stats Perform