For those of a nervous disposition, please look away now. For as the calendar year of 2024 comes to a close, this SBOTOP writer is putting aside his impartiality and diplomacy. For this is one of the few times in 40 years as a football fan when I despair at my own club and the misery it is providing.
I don’t profess to be a tactical whizz, I probably barely even qualify as one of the millions of ‘armchair experts’ who exist up and down the country, but I do know something which is so strikingly obvious and I am incredulous if professional coaches involved at the top level of the game cannot see it. The system Manchester United are currently playing will never succeed in the Premier League.
Some may point to the fact that Chelsea were title winners in 2017 playing three at the back, but it is much more than that and simply cannot be sustained.
No team at the highest level of English football has repeatedly been successful operating that way and new manager Ruben Amorim surely must see that the system he holds dear to his heart is ill suited to the group of talented players he inherited when he took over the Old Trafford hot seat just over a month ago.
A fourth successive loss in 11 days tells its own story.
The 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle, of course, cannot just be put down to formations and tactics for any number of players in a red shirt were not at the races in the opening half an hour, by which time they had gifted their opponents two goals.
But it was because of how they lined up that made it so easy for Eddie Howe’s triumph to secure a rare league success in the red half of Manchester.
Premier League 2024 highlights may have been few and far between for the Red Devils but the decision to replace a successful manager mid season and then, to compound matters, adopt a system which has rarely worked in more than 125 years of English football, is quite frankly staggering.
And yes, Aleander Isak and Joelinton were both unmarked and allowed free headers in the opening 19 minutes.
It condemned the hosts to a third straight home loss in all competitions for the first time in more than 60 years, five league defeats in the same month for the first time since September 1962 and ensures they are finishing a calendar year lower than seventh in the table for the first time since 1989, when they were 15th.
The new boss needs to abandon his preferred formation immediately if he is to succeed in English football. It’s a bloody car crash!
On a much brighter note, Monday night brought a first Premier League home win this season for Ipswich Town.
After wins at Spurs and Wolves, this was home points on the board at exactly the halfway point of the campaign and a first victory over Chelsea since 1993.
It inflicted back-to-back league defeats on Enzo Maresca’s men and, crucially puts the East Anglia side within a point of the safety zone.
Liam Delap did the damage, winning a penalty he rifled home, then setting up Omari Hutchinson for the second against his former club.
To put into context, the two Ipswich goal scorers were not even born the last time the Tractor Boys won a Premier League match at Portman Road. Both were born in 2003 and Ipswich’s last Premier League home win was in April 2002.
Premier League 2024 betting almost always makes the newly promoted outfits favourites for the drop but this result gives Ipswich and special talent Kieran McKenna renewed hope heading into the new year in their battle against relegation.
My final word of the year goes a team which ends the year in second spot with optimism unbounded and even some whispers of Champions League qualification.
I am, of course, in Nottingham where the late, great Brian Clough used to walk on water.
The form of Forest has moved through the stages of competent start, including one superb win at the leaders, and pleasantly surprising sustainability to totally unforeseen impetus.
At the halfway stage of the season, Nuno Espirito Santo has guided his team, which only just survived last term, to 37 points.
Over the past decade, an average of 68.5 points have been enough to seal fourth place and a Champions League spot.
Opta’s prediction model gives them a 10 per cent chance of getting there — and a one-in-five chance of coming fifth.
Surely they can’t, can they?
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