Erik ten Hag told his Manchester United staff last year he wanted to make playing 65 to 70 games per season the norm for the club, with the buzz of high-stakes midweek matches a regular post-Christmas occurrence.
And yet for the 2023-24 campaign, United find themselves in an entirely different position.
Manchester City and Arsenal are involved in Champions League knockout football this week and next respectively, but at Old Trafford, they are coming to terms with the prospect of no post-group-phase European games for the first time in nine years; that 2014-15 season was their first with no European football since English clubs were reintroduced post-Heysel ban in 1990-91.
There have been no Carabao Cup games in 2024 either because of the fourth-round loss to Newcastle United in November, meaning there is just far less football for United fans to get excited about for the rest of the season.
Consider this contrast: United played eight games in January 2023, but in that month this year, they had only three fixtures. Not since January 1963, when a freezing winter meant no league game between December 26 and February 23, and their FA Cup third-round tie being one of those delayed until March, have United played so few games at the beginning of a year.
It is a theme that will continue. United played 31 matches in the first four months of 2023; this season, it will be between 18 and 20 depending on whether they advance to the FA Cup semi-finals. The drop-off is huge.
The return of a Premier League winter break for the first time since Covid-era football meant an extra free weekend in January, though that was not necessarily a bad thing according to one source at United’s training ground, speaking anonymously as they did not have permission to do so. “We needed a break,” he told us. “A break from each other, a refresh. I think the manager needed a break.”
The lack of games can have positive implications for the players, but for the club, it is a different matter. A significant factor is where the matches that do take place are staged.
Buoyed by a freak run of 12 home draws in the two domestic cups, United played at Old Trafford 18 times in those first four months of last year. It could be as few as eight and a maximum of nine this time. The losses will be felt in the accounts in the shape of reduced ticket revenue, no megastore business on those days when there might have been a game, and no food and drink sales.
Away from the club, there will be a dearth of bookings for restaurants and hotels in Manchester, which really comes alive before and after huge European games. Football, especially United and more recently City, has been a major driver of Manchester’s tourist industry in the past 30 years.
When Manchester was bidding to stage the 2000 Summer Olympics, London’s Evening Standard newspaper mockingly claimed its best hotel was a mere Holiday Inn — the four-star Midland, where once upon a time Charles Rolls and Henry Royce decided to start making cars.
According to information supplied to The Athletic by the city council, Greater Manchester now boasts six hotels with five stars, 59 with four stars and 101 with three stars. There are 28,222 hotel rooms in Greater Manchester and 13,091 in the city centre — with another 2,133 planned within the next two years. Ranked 15th in Time Out’s list of the best cities in the world to visit in 2024 published last month, Manchester is booming.
But let’s stick to football and United.
This lack of matches — and of ones that really matter — at this stage of the season just feels weird.
A year ago at this time, United were looking forward to a two-leg tie against Barcelona, huge games (albeit in the Europa League, not the Champions League) which lived up to expectations. The season before, there were clashes with Atletico Madrid. But while United knocked Barcelona out, they are as reliable when it comes to losing to Atletico as they are to Sevilla.
The truth is, United have won only two Champions League knockout ties in the past decade, but at least they were there.
Beating Barcelona last February is one of United’s high points under Erik ten Hag (Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
It’s not like the women’s team offered fans an alternative route to watching European football as they were knocked out before the Champions League’s group stage, while the youth team — which added some joy to an underwhelming 2021-22 season for the club by winning the FA Youth Cup — went out of that competition at the second stage recently.
This is not where United want to be.
Their finances will be hit by a lack of European football, especially Champions League knockout matches. Players’ contracts are heavily incentivised if the team are involved in Europe’s top competition, but any savings there are outweighed by the loss of revenue, which also impacts the financial fair play position.
It didn’t have to be the Champions League, either. Another year in the Europa League would have been better for Ten Hag’s ability to manage his squad. Minutes could have been given to fringe players against seldom-played opponents. United’s knockout-phase matches and trips to Vigo and Saint-Etienne in that competition were among their most memorable in recent seasons. They’ll have none of those coming up. As the European competitions recommence, it feels like a case of ‘Look at what you could have won’.
If the draw had stayed the same, finishing third rather than fourth in their Champions League group would have meant a trip to Prague, with Galatasaray playing Sparta on the next two Thursdays. Some of the Europa League games and trips United have had after finishing third in the Champions League have been highly enjoyable — Ajax and Athletic Bilbao in 2012, for example, although maybe not Liverpool four years later. This season’s Europa League final is in Dublin, where United have huge support and sold out a pre-season friendly last summer in a matter of hours.
United have a wage bill predicated on playing in the Champions League but have never got to the last four of that competition in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era. A club who played Champions League football every season from 1996 to 2014 are now well off the pace.
The truth is if sixth-placed United do not improve in the league, there might be no European football next season at all, never mind just not having any after Christmas.
That reduction in games and excitement is a grim prospect, both on the pitch and off it.
(Top photo: Ryan Hiscott/Getty Images)
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