Why Manchester United’s fall feels worse than ever — and what it says about the Premier League

This is yet another story about the decay of Manchester United, about an unprecedented 12th loss in 25 games and a humiliating dip into 15th place, three spots clear of relegation.

But really, it is a story about the Premier League, because the Red Devils have been bad before; the difference this time is the quality of the teams embarrassing them.

United, to be clear, is chiefly responsible for its own demise. The club is rotting because reviled owners and clueless executives have mismanaged it. It is sinking to new low after new low, under new manager after new manager, because far too many of its players are mediocre and/or injured. They have gotten worse under Ruben Amorim, the coveted coach who arrived in November. "I have a lot of problems," Amorim admitted after Sunday’s 1-0 loss at Tottenham.

As he digested the defeat, though, he also accurately diagnosed another source of his pain. The English Premier League, he said, “is the hardest competition in the world.”

It has gotten more and more difficult over the past decade. And its top-to-bottom strength is why mediocrity can now drag upper-crust clubs like United and Spurs down toward its basement. Its 2010s TV revenue boom — from a £1.8 billion domestic deal in 2012-13 to a £5.1 billion deal starting in 2016-17 — has allowed so-called “mid-table clubs” to outspend many Champions League clubs across the European continent. Those are the clubs that are beating and leaping United; they, too, are part of this story.

In 2012-13, Deloitte’s Football Money League, which ranks the world’s top 30 soccer clubs by revenue, featured eight from England; now it features 14, including West Ham, Aston Villa, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham and Wolves.

Those previously overmatched clubs have used their newfound riches to bring a markedly different caliber of player to the middle of the Premier League, the type of player who narrows the gap between them and the former “Big Six.”

Several years ago, those six — Man United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham — seemed to have separated themselves from the Premier League’s chasing pack. Now, the middle is muddled, and there is relatively little separation, because Villa and West Ham and Wolves employ the stars that top-four teams in Germany and Italy once did.

In 2012-13, for example, Villa’s back four were Matt Lowton, Ciaran Clark, Nathan Baker and Joe Bennett, with Ashley Westwood in front of them; now, it’s Matty Cash, Ezri Konsa, Pau Torres and Lucas Digne — regulars for the national teams of Poland, England, Spain and France — with Argentina’s World Cup-winning hero, Emiliano Martinez, behind them.

The stark contrasts are everywhere you look. They’re at Newcastle, Fulham and Bournemouth. In that last year of the last modest TV deal, West Ham was riding Kevin Nolan, Mark Noble, Matt Jarvis, Matthew Taylor, Carlton Cole and Andy Carroll; now it trots out players signed from PSG, Ajax and Borussia Dortmund, plus a Brazilian national team starter.

Ruben Amorim, hired to turn things around, inherited a Manchester United squad that's gone from bad to worse. (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images) (Alex Pantling via Getty Images)

And West Ham, by the way, is in 16th place, because this isn’t a story about individual teams. The entire league, aside from the newly promoted teams, is, in 2012-13 terms, loaded.

They’re loaded with the dudes who used to go to Milan or Rome, or to France or the Netherlands. Now, 221 of Transfermarkt’s top 500 most valuable players are at English clubs — nearly as many as the 229 in the rest of Europe’s Big Five leagues combined.

And although the Big Six still boast dozens each, there are more (113 vs. 108) at the so-called Other 14. There are 15 at Brighton and nine at Brentford. There are eight at Bournemouth and seven at Wolves — who are stuck in a relegation battle.

The Premier League’s financial might, and corresponding preeminence, has also wooed a worldly collection of coaches to England.

The result: Although the Big Six still have considerable advantages, their margin for error has narrowed.

So, when Man United slumps from a clear top-20 team in the world to No. 35 in Opta’s global power rankings, there are 12 Premier League clubs above it — rather than the five there’d be in Spain, or the two there’d be in Germany.

It’s impossible to know just how far United has fallen from 2012-13, which also happened to be Sir Alex Ferguson’s final season. It’s impossible to definitively say whether United was better or worse under Erik Ten Haag, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, David Moyes or Amorim. But it’s clear that part of the reason the Red Devils have fallen so far, and stayed so low so late in a season, is that the EPL as a whole has risen

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