This is not a normal season for Manchester United. No European football for only the second time since English clubs were allowed back into UEFA competitions in 1990 means far fewer games. And they’re really feeling it now.
Knocked out in their opening tie of both domestic cups, United’s men’s team will have gone almost two weeks without a match by the time they visit Everton’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium for the first time on Monday, and with another round of the FA Cup and an international window both to come in March they are going to play on the Saturday or Sunday of only two weekends in the next seven.
By the end of January 2025, United had played 36 competitive games last season. By the same stage in this one, the figure was 23.
United played seven home matches in the Europa League last season as they got to the final, each approaching a 74,000 full house. That’s all those people paying for tickets, travel, merchandise, programmes, fanzines, food, hotel rooms, drinks and more.
All that is gone, even more so as Premier League matches are being switched to Mondays and Fridays, when demand for everything is lower. One Irish supporters’ club group had 35 fans coming to the home meeting with Everton in November, a number that more than halved to 15 when the game was switched to a Monday night.
United’s lack of games this season has cost more than just the club (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
United fans can ignore that midweek action in the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League is even happening. But their club’s absence from UEFA competition will be noted. One senior source in European football told me, “Of course the (European football) industry misses Manchester United.” The more masochistic or sporting among the fanbase can watch the European antics of others, from Crystal Palace fans fighting each other in Strasbourg to Newcastle United quietly going about their business in Marseille.
The way the coaches and squad plan for those games they do have is totally different, with more time off for everyone. United players have posted pictures from their holidays across Europe and beyond this week, after being given the OK to get out of town by head coach Michael Carrick as they had no FA Cup fixture last weekend and no midweek European tie. The kicker is 20 per cent lower wages for most of them, compared to if United were in the Champions League.
In 2014-15, the previous season when United had no European football and, like this one, were eliminated from the League Cup away by a lower-league team (MK Dons then, Grimsby Town now), they did at least manage five FA Cup games, including a fourth-round replay with Cambridge United, to fill the calendar up a bit.
There were noticeable knock-on effects of having so few fixtures. Staff football matches at the Carrington training ground became very regular and very fierce. There were around 20 such games that season and it got to the point where those involved – kit men, coaches, physios and analysts — were getting very fit and match sharp. The best player in them, by a mile and to nobody’s surprise, was then assistant manager Ryan Giggs, though you also had lads such as Rod Thornley, who had been semi-professional at Altrincham.
Giggs took staff matches seriously (Photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Giggs took the games seriously and was usually on the winning side. If a game was tight, he had the skill to make sure it wasn’t tight for long. But in one match, his team were only drawing with a few minutes left. The players could feel the former United and Wales winger starting to move up the gears.
A 13-time title winner with United, he only needed to be in first gear to be the best player in those staff games, but he started to run harder, get angrier and beat more people when he had the ball.
At one point, somebody from the other team was running through on goal in the last minute and seemed about to score the winner. Giggs chased him down and fouled him; a red-card challenge if it had been in a proper game. The lad turned, saw it was Giggs who’d done it and couldn’t really say much — he was the assistant manager. He picked his victim up with a sorry look, the resulting free kick was missed and then Giggs blitzed everyone to win the game with a last-gasp goal at the other end.
Many United followers used to travelling to European away games have fuller pockets and more free time this season.
There has been an increase in fans doing something different, from attending concerts across Europe instead of football matches to travelling with the United women’s team, who are playing Champions League football for the first time in their short history and were away at Atletico Madrid last week, winning 3-0 in the first leg of a last-16 tie.
Head coach Marc Skinner’s team also played a thrilling home game at Old Trafford against Paris Saint-Germain in November, though the sub-15,000 attendance was underwhelming. Hopefully the crowd will be bigger if the women use the club’s main stadium again when they face Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals in late March, having completed a 5-0 aggregate defeat of Atletico at Leigh Sports Village on Thursday.
The club also have the business end of the FA Youth Cup on the horizon, with the under-18s into the quarter-finals after beating their Oxford United counterparts 4-1 away on Wednesday. Sunderland host Brighton next week to decide which of them will visit United in the last eight next month. A record crowd of 67,492 watched Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho and company beat Nottingham Forest at Old Trafford in that competition’s final four years ago.
Others have watched more of the club’s other junior teams, including the under-21s, chalking up first-time stadium visits at Solihull Moors, Brackley Town or Tamworth in the National League Cup.
The Manchester United world always has something happening, just not as much this season as usual.
Dozens of fans went to Belfast in November to commemorate the 20th anniversary of United icon George Best’s death.
Supporters travelled to Belfast to pay tribute to George Best, 20 years after his death (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
They visited his former home on the Cregagh Estate, his grave and Windsor Park, where he represented Northern Ireland for 13 years and strove in vain to qualify his country for a major tournament. And they were well received by all, including George’s sister Barbara McNarry, a former Lord Mayor of Belfast, leading local side Linfield FC, who play at Windsor Park, and their manager (and former United youth player) David Healy.
They visited The Red Devil bar on the Falls Road, and Linfield’s big rivals Glentoran’s stadium, The Oval, too. Back in Manchester, Best’s son Calum presented an exhibition called Twenty Years Of Immortal Legacy, comprising 40 artworks celebrating many of his father’s iconic moments.
One fan, Richard Mawdsley, travelled to Milan that same month with family and friends.
“We wanted to go to Italy to watch some games,” he says. “And see San Siro before the cultural vandalism of knocking the place down happens.” They attended a third-division game between local side Alcione and Novara on the Saturday afternoon and then Italy versus Norway at San Siro in the evening.
“Tickets were on open sale and a very reasonable €28 (£24;$33) each saw us on the front row of the second tier behind the goal,” he says. “One more visit to San Siro with United before it goes would be very welcome, but this trip wouldn’t have happened had United been in Europe, as we would have been saving money for that. It was also a good chance to go with family who wouldn’t normally come on a United European away trip.”
It’s supposed to be the players who benefit most, with more time to prepare for the matches they do have, fewer far-flung overnight stays and a smaller chance of injuries with fewer fixtures. Luke Shaw, Casemiro and Harry Maguire are three players now in their thirties who have profited from there being only one game per week.
United have also benefited from coming up against domestic opponents who’ve played midweek in Europe; for example, defeating Palace 2-1 away in November after they’d had a hard match at Strasbourg less than 72 hours before, losing to the French side by the same score.
Over the next month, in the only weekend games United will play until Leeds United visit on April 11, Palace and Villa both go to Old Trafford on Sundays after European ties on the Thursdays.
Nothing can really compensate for these yawning gaps without football but hopefully they will make it possible for United to secure European qualification in one of the three competitions for next season.
Let us know in the comments what you’ve been doing with fewer Manchester United men’s games to watch this season…