Manchester United's Fall From Grace Is Complete, the Only Way Is Up | OneFootball

Manchester United won’t end the 2024–25 season with the Europa League trophy in hand, and maybe that outcome is necessary in the bigger picture.

Ruben Amorim has spoken throughout his six months in charge of the “suffering” that the club has to go through in the pursuit of ever challenging for the biggest trophies again.

The opportunity to claim a trophy that would go some way to papering over the cracks of a worst ever Premier League-era campaign, by providing a passage straight into next season’s Champions League, perhaps it wasn’t the thing that was needed.

Winning last season’s FA Cup to secure Europa League qualification, having fallen to what was then a worst Premier League finish (eighth), had already masked some issues. But the sticking plaster that was applied then has been well and truly ripped off in the 12 months since.

There are obviously huge drawbacks to losing against Tottenham Hotspur in Bilbao. Trophies are everything in football, especially for a club with Manchester United’s history. Prestige aside, the riches that come with playing in the Champions League are vast and would also be welcome in Manchester at a time when United are having to make brutal cost-cutting decisions.

Yet the chastening nature of defeat in the Europa League, and the lack of a silver lining to the season, is important in a different way too.

Ruben Amorim gets his chance to rebuild now. / IMAGO/Every Second Media

A Europa League victory, as much as it will be celebrated in north London, has now partially masked Tottenham’s deficiencies. Let’s not forget that Spurs will go into the final day of the Premier League just one place above the relegation zone. United, on the other hand, a single place higher, have nowhere to hide and don’t have a choice about facing up to their problems. Had the result in Bilbao gone the other way, it might have been too easy to believe things were at least a little rosier.

For Amorim and the football hierarchy, the planning for 2025–26 starts in earnest right now. Having arrived with a very specific style of play to implement, the Portuguese still hasn’t had a proper chance to stamp himself on the squad. That will come with pre-season. Before then, decisions must quickly be made on who can work in the system, who can’t, and who needs to be recruited. Any business that follows has to be ruthless and efficient.

United won’t have European football on the calendar and that may impact the caliber of player they can attract, particularly on a reduced budget. Amorim has at least been bullish in that respect, openly warning prospective targets in recent weeks that he doesn’t want players who are only interested in being at a club in the Champions League. They have to want to play for United.

As United start over again, the lighter schedule and lack of regular midweek games might also be helpful while things are being built up. Chelsea were in a similar position going into 2016–17 and it ended up benefiting them massively, turning a 10th place finish into a Premier League title. The level of competition and the ground to make up suggests that turnaround would be impossible for United, but it now feels they have fallen as far as possible and the only way from here has to be up.