Manchester United might need to sack Ruben Amorim, sell Bruno Fernandes, replace Andre Onana and induce a global pandemic to meet their targets next season.<\/p>\n
Despite slugging it out with Europa League final opponents Spurs to see who can embarrass themselves the most domestically, 16th-placed Manchester United have set themselves the objective of a top-six finish in 2025\/26<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Every Premier League club has been set a target for next season<\/strong><\/a> but that seems like one of the more outlandish examples.<\/p>\n Only five times in the history of 20-team Premier League campaigns has a side improved their league position by 10 places from one season to the next. Nottingham Forest will make that a half-dozen soon enough, but what lessons can Manchester United take from the past?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Aston Villa (from 16th in 2002\/03 to 6th in 2003\/04) \u2013 changed managers Having broken his managerial retirement after nine months at the beck and call of a panicking Villa in February 2002, Taylor should perhaps have consulted predecessor John Gregory about the business practises of his new boss<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n But Taylor was lured back to the West Midlands in what he would later state he always knew was a \u201ctransitional\u201d role. A record of 19 wins from 60 games saw Villa lurch from 8th one season to 16th in his first and only full campaign, before a jump back up to 6th under his replacement.<\/p>\n David O\u2019Leary had been out of work for a year after leaving trophyless Leeds<\/a><\/strong>, but an exciting crop of Villa academy graduates dovetailed wonderfully with the experience of Dion Dublin, Ronny Johnsen, Nolberto Solano and\u00a0Juan Pablo Angel to turn relegation battlers into European qualification contenders.<\/p>\n The lesson for Manchester United? Make Ruben Amorim quit; he genuinely doesn\u2019t seem far off anyway.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Everton (from 17th in 2003\/04 to 4th in 2004\/05) \u2013 sold best player It does skip past a few key points, like the signing of Tim Cahill, the partnership between David Weir and Alan Stubbs and the form of Lee Carsley. But fundamentally Everton improved as a team when they cashed in on their star player.<\/p>\n Only Norwich (3rd in 1992\/93) have ever finished higher in the Premier League with a negative goal difference than the Toffees, who scored the same number of goals when finishing 4th as they did to come 17th, while only actually suffering four fewer defeats.<\/p>\n Even when they chucked their new-found transfer weight around<\/strong><\/a> it backfired, but without Rooney at least Thomas Gravesen could finally spread his wings.<\/p>\n The lesson for Manchester United? Sell Bruno Fernandes, and maybe sign Marcus Bent.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Fulham (from 17th in 2007\/08 to 7th in 2008\/09) \u2013 signed competent keeper Fulham were already 18th and in trouble when they appointed Roy Hodgson as Lawrie Sanchez\u2019s successor in December 2007. But their struggle to build any momentum left them in this spot heading into the final straight:<\/p>\n The Cottagers then trailed Manchester City 2-0 within 21 minutes of the first of those three must-win games. Yet they did precisely that, Diomansy\u00a0Kamara capping a ludicrous comeback in stoppage time at the Etihad before Birmingham and Portsmouth were felled for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n Fulham\u2019s eagerness to avoid a similar scenario meant a substantial summer spend, with Andy Johnson, Bobby Zamora, John Paintsil and Zoltan Gera among those signed. But it was free agent Mark Schwarzer, released by Middlesbrough, who rejected Juventus and Bayern Munich to move to west London.<\/p>\n Perhaps a full pre-season of Hodgson\u2019s double training sessions of two banks of four was actually the decisive factor but Fulham went from conceding 60 goals in 2007\/08 to letting in only 34 in 2008\/09, fewer than Arsenal and indeed every team bar the top three, with Schwarzer equalling a record for most clean sheets in a Premier League season for the Cottagers which still stands.<\/p>\n The lesson for Manchester United? It\u2019s not great news for Andre Onana<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Leicester (from 14th in 2014\/15 to 1st in 2015\/16) \u2013 changed managers but also signed probably the league\u2019s best player from France\u2019s mid-table It might also be an idea to identify one of the most effective players in Premier League history, going entirely unnoticed in Ligue Un at a ludicrously low price. Leicester, unbeknownst to everyone including themselves, already had most of the pieces in place to win the title, but N\u2019Golo Kante, a \u00a35.6m signing from Caen, made director of football Steve Walsh perhaps the sport\u2019s most coveted man.<\/p>\n Does the flap of a butterfly\u2019s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? And does Nigel Pearson calling a journalist an ostrich trigger a series of events which culminates in Andrea Bocelli belting out Nessun Dorma at a disbelieving King Power Stadium?<\/p>\n The lesson for Manchester United? Appoint Claudio Ranieri and raid Toulouse.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n West Ham (from 16th in 2019\/20 to 6th in 2020\/21) \u2013 stopped playing in front of fans From the date of the first game without fans in June 2020 to May 2021, when heavy restrictions were still placed on attendance, only five teams accrued more points than West Ham, who trailed Arsenal on goal difference alone.<\/p>\n Considering their plight beforehand it was a ludicrous turnaround. Moyes was again the architect of a huge leap in places but he struggled after replacing Manuel Pellegrini and things only started to click when Michail Antonio was free to chase long balls and run the channels without fear of being chastised by supporters.<\/p>\n The lesson for Manchester United? Be managed by David Moyes and break into some labs in Wuhan.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>\u201cI had another year left on my contract and I was under no pressure to resign as Aston Villa manager,\u201d said Graham Taylor. \u201cBut I have become increasingly unhappy at how the club as a whole was run,\u201d he added, never naming infamous chairman Doug Ellis but leaving little doubt as to his reasoning either.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>\u201cI sold Wayne Rooney and Everton got better,\u201d was how David Moyes allayed any concerns West Ham might have had over losing prized asset Declan Rice. And frankly it was powerful logic: they avoided relegation by six points with him as their top scorer, Manchester United handed \u00a327m over after Euro 2004 and Everton used those funds to help qualify for the Champions League.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>It remains one of the more unlikely relegation escapes in Premier League history, perhaps a little lost in the mire of Derby selfishly and simultaneously recording their Apocalypse Season.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>There is little point in trying to dilute and replicate any element of Leicester\u2019s title-winning season, but also Manchester United should probably sack Amorim after his son is embroiled in a racist sex tape scandal before appointing a likeable but ill-suited manager, being widely tipped for relegation and capitalising on the collective bed-soiling of the usual contenders.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>While the instinct is to wipe the entire sorry saga from memory, those months in which Jesse Lingard and Tomas Soucek were the single greatest footballers on earth were at least a novelty. A great many things would not have happened without lockdown<\/strong><\/a> and West Ham almost qualifying for the Champions League is chief among them.<\/p>\n