Why Man Utd have been better than their results

With just two Premier League wins since the start of April, it seems only a fool would say that Manchester United have been improving under Ruben Amorim…and yet that’s exactly what the stats suggest.

While only Tottenham have taken fewer points in their last 10 games, United’s underlying numbers suggest their performances have deserved more and, if anything, it’s the players who have underperformed more than Amorim and his much-maligned formation.

We’ve excluded penalties to show how good United have been at creating and restricting chances themselves, rather than relying on opposition clumsiness or shirt-pulling like they did to score the winner against Burnley.

As you can see, United have taken the most shots in the Premier League in the last 10 games, while only rivals Manchester City – Sunday’s Premier League opponents – have faced fewer among the 17 sides ever-present during the time frame.

While it’s worth mentioning that those 10 games include 65 minutes against 10-man Bournemouth and Aston Villa, it’s not a given that teams easily dominate games when an opponent has a man sent off, as Liverpool’s recent game against Newcastle showed.

What’s the cause of this big underperformance in both boxes? It’s hard to know for sure. It could be that the players simply aren’t good enough – in which case United buying a whole new front line and goalkeeper this summer makes a lot more sense – or a lack of confidence or just plain old bad luck.

Even so, the expected goal numbers already take that added difficulty into account so United’s players should be doing better, although both creating the worst chances and being the worst at converting chances is not a good combination.

Why does it matter how much more United have recently dominated games and been ‘expected’ to score when at the end of the day, scoring and conceding actual goals is all that matters?

While being clinical in both boxes is obviously important and United do need to work on the quality of their shots, not even the most blessed or cursed teams can ‘cheat’ their expected goal numbers forever.