‘What are Manchester United?’ Sancho for England? A good season to be docked points? – The Briefing

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football.

This was the weekend Chelsea won without convincing anyone, Kevin De Bruyne came back after five months out and transformed Manchester City, and Vincent Kompany got very angry about the officials.

Here, we will ask whether Sir Jim Ratcliffe knows where to start with Manchester United, whether Jadon Sancho could play himself back into the England reckoning on loan at Borussia Dortmund, and if this is the best Premier League season ever for someone to get a points deduction…

Where will Ratcliffe start with this Manchester United team?

This could be a generational thing because those younger than, say, 25 may not properly remember the days when Manchester United were actually good.

But for those of us of slightly more advanced years, who do vividly recall the days when Sir Alex Ferguson’s team dominated the Premier League, it still feels quite strange that United being bad is so… normalised.

Their 2-2 draw against Tottenham on Sunday was greeted with profound indifference from the crowd at Old Trafford, but you were also left with the sense that, in the context of everything else, it was actually a decent point for Erik ten Hag’s side.

And then you consider the opposition: Spurs have been refreshingly good in their first season under Ange Postecoglou, but their starting XI was riven with injuries. They were missing James Maddison and Son Heung-min, their two best attacking players and arguably their two best players full stop. Their front six yesterday probably only contained one first-choice player in Richarlison.

They had a second-string midfield, Micky van de Ven was playing his first game in over two months and went down with cramp towards the end, and they couldn’t fill their nine available spots on the bench, even with two goalkeepers named on it.

It wasn’t just that United couldn’t beat a visiting team with so many key absentees, more that in the second half they barely competed with them. United didn’t have a shot on target after the break. Over the 90 minutes, the possession statistics were 36-64 in favour of the Londoners.

INEOS petrochemicals empire founder Ratcliffe was in the stands for the first time since his 25 per cent takeover was announced just before Christmas and told media before the game that his people will probably have their feet fully under the table in a month or so, once the deal is ratified by the Premier League.

Ratcliffe seemed reasonably happy to be there, posing for selfies and bending Ferguson’s ear as they sat next to each other in the directors’ box, but there must have been moments during that second half where he, figuratively if not exactly literally, puffed out his cheeks and wondered quite what he has got himself in for.

Because where do you start with this team? Gary Neville, the long-time United full-back and now a leading analyst on UK broadcaster Sky Sports’ football coverage, asked the pertinent question afterwards: “What are Manchester United?”.

Based on this game, and indeed most in recent memory, it’s incredibly difficult to tell.

Good luck, Jim.

Can Jadon Sancho make himself an England candidate again?

For the moment, it’s just good to see Jadon Sancho being part of a first-team squad again, allowed to eat meals alongside his colleagues and feeling comfortable in his surroundings, never mind actually playing football.

Sancho has rejoined his former club Dortmund on loan (Uwe Anspach/picture alliance via Getty Images)

His Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag was asked about Sancho before the game against Tottenham on Sunday, telling Sky Sports: “So after he was signed, one year before (I was here), there were issues. We have had issues all the way through and so you can make out his stay at Manchester United so far is not a success.”

Sancho is clearly not blameless for the situation, but it was pretty grating to hear Ten Hag airily refer only to “issues” when the winger spent time away from the team last season due to both “physical and mental” problems. Problems that Ten Hag himself spoke about publicly.

Whatever the reason for his time at United not being “a success”, Sancho now appears to be at a club where he feels more comfortable.

His second debut for Borussia Dortmund, against Darmstadt on Saturday, was only half an hour or so coming off the bench, but he set up a goal for his old pal Marco Reus and generally looked more lively than you might expect for someone who has barely even been able to train properly since August, never mind play in any games.

Sancho will presumably be looking no further than his next match, working up to making a start, from there getting back into proper match sharpness, developing something approaching form, and just enjoying football again.

But that doesn’t stop the rest of us from looking a little further ahead because if all goes well from here, the idea of him being in the England squad for this summer’s European Championship isn’t outlandish.

Most of his competitors in those wide positions are not exactly in the finest form. Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka looks exhausted. Jack Grealish has seemingly been supplanted by Jeremy Doku in the Manchester City team. Raheem Sterling of Chelsea appears to be fully out of the international picture. Marcus Rashford scored only his third league goal of the season for United on Sunday. Maddison is injured and is better used more centrally. Only City’s Phil Foden is really in anything close to his best form.

The caveat is that it takes a lot to break into England manager Gareth Southgate’s thinking. He generally remains loyal to those in situ and good club form alone is often not enough.

But before he made this return to Germany, Sancho wasn’t close to being a factor.

Now, he’s in a position to make himself one again.

Is this the best season to get a points deduction?

Today (Monday) is the big day. The one where clubs will find out if they have fallen foul of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules, with punishments to be decided in due course.

As our David Ornstein reported on Sunday, it is expected that Nottingham Forest and Everton (yes, again) are the two who will have fingers pointed at them, although both have defences prepared and will offer up a range of mitigating circumstances for any breaches.

It’s quite hard to feel sympathy for clubs deemed to have broken the rules, although there are plenty of arguments against the rules themselves, their fairness and whether any system that actively encourages teams to sell their best homegrown players on the basis that they represent ‘pure profit’ is really in the best interests of the broader game. But it’s a bit like complaining about being done for driving at 35mph in a 20mph zone: the big red signs are there, and it’s your fault if you missed them.

Forest are currently 15th in the 20-team table, four points clear of third-bottom Luton Town. So while it’s currently unclear what their punishment might be, a points deduction would almost certainly send them into those three relegation places.

Forest are poised to be charged with breaching the Premier League’s finance rules (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

That would not be ideal, to say the least. But Forest — or whoever gets a deduction that could put them in relegation trouble — might take solace in the fact this is probably the best season where it could happen.

Presumably Luton, Burnley and Sheffield United fans are thoroughly bored of people telling them they are the worst set of promoted clubs the Premier League has seen… but the numbers do go some way to backing that up.

In the previous 31 seasons of the Premier League, there haven’t been many times when the teams in the relegation places have had fewer collective points than the current group. We are on round 21 of this campaign and those three have 37 points between them: there’s only been one previous season — 2020-21, when Fulham, West Brom and Sheffield United could only muster 35 — with a lower total.

There is a significant caveat here in that Luton and Sheffield United have only played 20 times, but even if they both won their games in hand (which feels unlikely), that still only puts the 2023-24 collective above six other seasons — and one of those was 2007-08, when Derby’s historically low final total of 11 points dragged the others down somewhat.

There have only been two previous seasons when the third-bottom side has had fewer than Luton’s 16 points. There have only been three previous seasons when the team in 20th have been in single figures.

All three have, at various stages, shown some signs of life. It’s not certain they will all get relegated, but the clubs that face a potential points deduction will be glad they are there.

What’s coming up

If you are a glutton for football, if you think of little but gorging yourself on the game, if your happiness is determined by being able to watch as many matches as you can take in, this is your time.

• Firstly, the Africa Cup of Nations. There are at least two, sometimes three games on every day this week as the first set of group fixtures is completed, but the big day is Thursday: that’s when hosts Ivory Coast face Nigeria (the latter having drawn rather stodgily with Guinea Bissau in their opener), then Egypt are up against Senegal. There’s also the Guinea derby as Bissau play Equatorial, although as geography fans will tell you, the two countries are actually nowhere near each other.
• And then there’s the Asian Cup: Son Heung-min and South Korea get their latest quest for the title going when they play Bahrain on Monday. Other choice ties for the week include Saudi Arabia vs Oman on Tuesday, hosts Qatar’s second fixture sees them face Tajikistan on Wednesday, and it’s Australia vs Syria on Thursday.
• The FA Cup admittedly does feel slightly prosaic after all that, but it does have its charms and there are a stack of third-round replays on Tuesday and Wednesday. Keep an eye on Wolves vs Brentford tomorrow: the winners must travel to West Bromwich Albion and West Midlands Police have determined that fourth-round game must kick off at 11.45am UK time on Sunday, January 28 to try to prevent the spicier clashes between fans… on the assumption that Albion’s neighbours and bitter rivals Wolves will go through. So if visitors Brentford win, brace yourself for the dampest squib of all time.
• Closing out the week on Friday night is a single Women’s Super League game, as Leicester City — no wins since the second game of the season — face Aston Villa.

Your Monday reading list

(Top photos: Getty Images)