Manchester United's 40-Game Nightmare: Welcome to the Club Nobody Wants to Join

The curtain has come down on any lingering hopes of European glory for Manchester United. With their exit from the FA Cup third round at the hands of Brighton at Old Trafford, combined with their absence from Continental competition following the Grimsby Town debacle last August, United will limp through 2025/26 playing the bare minimum: just 40 games. It's their shortest season in 111 years, and frankly, they should probably just hand the job to Roy Hodgson as caretaker and call it a day.

This unwanted distinction places them in some spectacularly grim company. Since Sir Alex Ferguson hung up his coat in 2013, only eight Premier League outfits have managed this particular feat of fixture minimisation. The average finishing position of those eight sides? A thoroughly depressing 15th place—precisely where Ruben Amorim had already dragged United last season. Michael Carrick will be desperately hoping to avoid repeating that particular trick.

The Rogues' Gallery

Newcastle's 2021/22 campaign perfectly captures the despair. Under two different managers, they crashed out of the League Cup to Burnley on penalties at St James' Park—this after Steve Bruce made nine changes to a side already reeling from two opening-day defeats. Eddie Howe's arrival proved no remedy; in merely his eighth match, third-tier Cambridge humiliated the Magpies at the same ground. The takeover that summer had promised revolution. It delivered only embarrassment. Still, Bruno Guimaraes and Dan Burn arrived shortly after, though only one would eventually matter. Newcastle finished 11th.

Crystal Palace managed the trick twice under Hodgson, which tells you everything you need to know about Roy's managerial philosophy. In 2019/20, they exited the League Cup via penalties after a goalless draw with Colchester, then lost 1-0 to Derby in the FA Cup. Fourteen games into the league season, they were already mentally preparing for another 14th-place finish. Two years earlier in 2020/21, Bournemouth and Wolves dispatched them with similar ease—though the League Cup exit did feature Wayne Hennessey's memorable penalty miss in an 11-10 defeat that apparently interrupted his Nazi studies. Hodgson engineered both campaigns with surgical precision, as if 40 games of mediocrity was the actual objective.

Leeds' 2020/21 season offered a curious silver lining. Yes, they lost to Hull in the Carabao and suffered the indignity of League Two Crawley's shock FA Cup victory (which handed a debut to Mark Wright, of all people), but their 9th-place Premier League finish represented their highest league position in almost two decades. Marcelo Bielsa duly expressed his customary sadness at the cup exits, though his record of zero cup wins across six attempts under his tenure suggested he wasn't exactly heartbroken.

Cardiff's 2018/19 collapse saw Neil Warnock warn his troops not to "be a headline" before their Gillingham trip—a curious request given that nobody was particularly paying attention anyway. Norwich sent them packing from the League Cup while Gillingham administered a 1-0 defeat at Priestfield. They finished 18th. Huddersfield matched Cardiff's pathetic stumble, losing to Stoke and Bristol City without scoring in either match—a performance so dire it resembled an England warm-up friendly against second-rate opposition. David Wagner departed after a goalless draw against similarly doomed Cardiff; Jan Siewert completed the job of guiding the Terriers to relegation.

West Brom's 2016/17 campaign at least offered Tony Pulis a convenient excuse. After Tom Ince's free-kick breached their wall—referee Jon Moss having marked out 13 paces instead of 10—Pulis lamented the "breaks you need to get through in cup football." Conveniently overlooking that drawing Steve McClare's Derby and facing League One's Northampton represented exactly the sort of advantageous draws most sides dream of. They finished 10th.

QPR's 2014/15 disaster proved instructive. Harry Redknapp, making nine changes for a Burton trip, later reflected that "they showed me what they can do—and it wasn't an awful lot." His subsequent career trajectory suggested the description applied equally to the manager himself. Sheffield United's 3-0 FA Cup thrashing at Loftus Road was merely a preview of the league hammerings to follow. QPR finished 20th, and Rangers don't do cup runs anyway.

Manchester United now join this distinguished assembly of the condemned. Forty games. No European nights. No cup dreams. Just the slow, agonising march toward another season of irrelevance.