Hypothetical - how would 2007/2008 Man Utd fare in this season's PL?

[noodlehair]

Firstly, how insanely good was this squad? Secondly, how would it stand up in today's league? Squad as follows (minus a few of the youth players)


GK:
VDS
Foster
Kuszczak

CB:
Ferdinand
Vidic
Pique
Evans
Silvestre

RB:
Brown
Neville
Simpson

LB:
Evra
O'Shea
Heinze

MD:
Scholes
Carrick
Giggs
Hargreaves
Anderson
Fletcher

FW:
Rooney
Ronaldo
Tevez
Saha
Nani
Park
Ole (not sure he was actually fit for any of this season)


I mean, that walks the league doesn't it? I genuinely think they win every game apart from away to the top three. Obviously with a few hiccups here and there. Only City who I think would be able to compete. There's probably 8 players there who if you put them in the current squad of any team outside Liverpool/City/Arsenal now would be easily the best player.

Its like someone cheated at Football Manager by editing the database. Imagine having to basically give Gerard Pique away because he has no prospect of ever being more than your 3rd best centreback.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

That was our best ever squad in fairness. Had it not been for Barca having possibly the best club side ever, they’d have won 3 CL’s I’m sure.

 

[Eplel]

Prime Fletcher would boss the current league.

 

[adexkola]

That team got 87 points, would definitely be competitive today

 

[AndySmith1990]

With Ferguson in charge that team would win the league. Without Ferguson, it'd still have a decent chance

 

[King Azaz the Unabridged]

Winners, for sure.

That team won 3 titles in a row and a CL (plus another CL final and semi-final) in an era where the other Prem teams were top quality and consistently threatening in Europe too - Chelsea and Liverpool regularly made it to the CL semis (and one final each) in that timeframe, Arsenal got to a semi too. Even within the league, the season we won the CL, Arsenal finished 3rd on 83 points. The season after that, Chelsea were 3rd with 83 points again.

This current season aside, there's really been nothing close to that level of competition in recent seasons - we've finished 2nd to City twice without getting that many points. When we finished 3rd to Liverpool, we had 66 . 2006-10 was about as competitive as the PL has been in my time watching football, and any team who dominated the way that United side did would easily win in the current day.

And we only let in 22 goals in the entire league season - still ten games to go in 2023/24 and the entire top 3 has already conceded more than that!

 

[Remember the geese]

They would win it. Obviously.

 

[andy0]

Then signed Berbatov ...

 

[gaffs]

That was our best ever squad in fairness. Had it not been for Barca having possibly the best club side ever, they’d have won 3 CL’s I’m sure.

Agree. We had a great combination of experience, youth and world class players in their prime years.

Only Barca were better.

 

[Hugh Jass]

With Ferguson in charge we would win the league.

 

[TsuWave]

The core of that United team is arguably the third best club side of all time. 3 CL finals in 4 years whilst winning domestically. Not many have done that. They were so unlucky they ran into the greatest club side of all time - and history is not kind to second best, but go do your googles. It's between Barcelona, Madrid and that United for third best

They would be cleaning up right now

 

[Offside]

Unreal squad. Same as City now. Would be competing with them.

 

[adexkola]

The core of that United team is arguably the third best club side of all time. 3 CL finals in 4 years whilst winning domestically. Not many have done that. They were so unlucky they ran into the greatest club side of all time - and history is not kind to second best, but go do your googles. It's between Barcelona, Madrid and that United for third best

They would be cleaning up right now

Good topic

Some Bayern, Juventus, Milan sides would be in contention as wll

 

[foolsgold]

Crazy to have a survivor from that era 16 years later starting for us in the league.

 

[Robertd0803]

We would have the league won already.

Only team that could give that team issues was the 99 team. (And Barcelona sadly).

 

[Oranges038]

Probably be the best in England.

Arsenal/Liverpool current squads don't even come close. City arguably have a squad almost as good but player for player across defence Utd are better, City might just shade the midfield battle, but that Utd forward line is much better.

Around Europe, there's not a team other than City that's close to it if we're being honest. Would easily be reaching CL finals barring huge feck ups.

 

[adexkola]

The only flaw in that side was our inability to deal with pressing.

If you transported that side to today, and trained them on modern tactics then now we're talking. As is, that flaw would level the playing ground against sides with inferior players but superior tactics

 

[Zed 101]

With ETH in charge dunno, not a lot of high press players in that squad, especially in the midfield, think you can discount Hargreaves as he was perma injured, with SAF in charge would certainly be right up there no doubt, but then with SAF in charge I think our current squad would be easily top 4 if not well in the title race...

If you could pick one player from that squad to have now though.... that would be tough, the obvious choice would be Ronaldo, but I think I would go either Scholes for Bruno, or Rio for any of our defenders... Scholes it is... but there is not a player from that 1st 11 + main subs that would not immediately walk into the current first team....I think Garnacho, Mainoo and Martinez would be the only players from our current squad that would stand a chance of playing in that 1st 11

 

[rimaldo]

football was different back then. all the players smoked and did happy slapping. transport them to today and their lungs would give out. don’t forget that the human race is also forever getting taller. by estimate, those players from 07 would be a good three foot shorter than today’s giants.

 

[11101]

They'd win it, easily. Assuming they were training the modern way too. In virtually every position we would be the best in the league. Right back maybe not, possibly one of the midfielders. Otherwise who is better?

If it was literally lifting them up and dumping them in 2024 they would struggle to beat City as the game has sped up and pressing is such a big thing now. That team played a different style of football and that style has been superseded.

 

[Hammondo]

Winners, for sure.

That team won 3 titles in a row and a CL (plus another CL final and semi-final) in an era where the other Prem teams were top quality and consistently threatening in Europe too - Chelsea and Liverpool regularly made it to the CL semis (and one final each) in that timeframe, Arsenal got to a semi too. Even within the league, the season we won the CL, Arsenal finished 3rd on 83 points. The season after that, Chelsea were 3rd with 83 points again.

This current season aside, there's really been nothing close to that level of competition in recent seasons - we've finished 2nd to City twice without getting that many points. When we finished 3rd to Liverpool, we had 66 . 2006-10 was about as competitive as the PL has been in my time watching football, and any team who dominated the way that United side did would easily win in the current day.

And we only let in 22 goals in the entire league season - still ten games to go in 2023/24 and the entire top 3 has already conceded more than that!

All true, but about the last part, there are simply far more goals scored in general as less teams park the bus, and attacking in general has improved. So it's not a good comparison.

 

[Hammondo]

This season City have not been good, so I think we would win without hassle.

The previous 2 seasons would be difficult, close between us and City.

 

[bosnian_red]

Would compete toe to toe with city for all trophies. Can't really say that any side would walk it ahead of city, but would be a tough to call race. Same with 99 United.

 

[tomaldinho1]

Quite a comfortable win I would have thought.

You have to also factor in how much easier the league has become for the better teams, there's a lot of money in the PL but the split between top and bottom is greater AND we're going through a phase stylistically were everyone wants to play out from the back, press and it's rare to find the teams who want to sit in for 90mins. Back then very few teams would ship more than 60 goals a season over 38 games, this season we'll get loads (already 3 teams and there's 10 games left).

 

[El Jefe]

The only flaw in that side was our inability to deal with pressing.

If you transported that side to today, and trained them on modern tactics then now we're talking. As is, that flaw would level the playing ground against sides with inferior players but superior tactics

I don’t actually think that was a problem for the team this year as it was in 2006/07 with more physical teams. The addition of Anderson and Hargreaves brought a physicality and dynamism to our midfield that meant we could be just as aggressive. Scholes and Carrick were absolutely top notch but in some games it could be too much for them.

I remember the Anfield game that year as well as the Emirates one, that’s where Anderson really gained his notoriety with the fans. It was usual for us to get run off the park at Anfield but that day Anderson and Hargreaves brought dynamism to our midfield that wasn’t seen since Ince and Keane days. It also helped that Ando could drive through midfield and evade any press.

Another point on pressing, we were the best pressing team of that time so I can only imagine what our counterpress would be like in todays game with Rooney and Tevez up top and having Evra and Brown push up and Rio sweeping behind. One of the rare squads that is built for any era.

 

[Skills]

Would win win the league, might struggle in the head to heads against Man City though.

The midfield let's it down a little - especially because Scholes wasn't in great form for a lot of that season from what I remember.

 

[gormless]

Heinze and Ole were gone by 07/08.
I think Neville played literally 10 minutes all season due to an injury

 

[Siorac]

It would compete for the title, certainly.

The idea that it would walk the league is a bit silly though. That side didn't walk the actual league it competed in. The title race went down to the last day against Avram Grant's Chelsea.

 

[Murder on Zidane's Floor]

Firstly, how insanely good was this squad? Secondly, how would it stand up in today's league? Squad as follows (minus a few of the youth players)


GK:
VDS
Foster
Kuszczak

CB:
Ferdinand
Vidic
Pique
Evans
Silvestre

RB:
Brown
Neville
Simpson

LB:
Evra
O'Shea
Heinze

MD:
Scholes
Carrick
Giggs
Hargreaves
Anderson
Fletcher

FW:
Rooney
Ronaldo
Tevez
Saha
Nani
Park
Ole (not sure he was actually fit for any of this season)


I mean, that walks the league doesn't it? I genuinely think they win every game apart from away to the top three. Obviously with a few hiccups here and there. Only City who I think would be able to compete. There's probably 8 players there who if you put them in the current squad of any team outside Liverpool/City/Arsenal now would be easily the best player.

Its like someone cheated at Football Manager by editing the database. Imagine having to basically give Gerard Pique away because he has no prospect of ever being more than your 3rd best centreback.

With modern coaching, amazing.

 

[UnofficialDevil]

Title challenging squad.. Not with ETH though.

 

[ShinjiNinja26]

We win the lot!

 

[Powderfinger]

If the players and SAF were truly of this era, and had spent the last decade with the same training methods and learning/facing the same kind of tactics, then you win the league.

If you just time traveled the team and manager to 23-24 and had them start playing games, you finish fourth.

 

[Jev]

Nobody walks the league against this City side, it’s an all-time great team, just like our 07/08 side.

There’s a higher concentration of top talent in the top sides today, which is why the Premier League is now won with a higher points total. I do think the side would be challenging and keeping pace with the other three.

 

[Bastian]

Would win the league comfortably and every other team would fear them.

 

[King Azaz the Unabridged]

Nobody walks the league against this City side, it’s an all-time great team, just like our 07/08 side.

There’s a higher concentration of top talent in the top sides today, which is why the Premier League is now won with a higher points total. I do think the side would be challenging and keeping pace with the other three.

I don't disagree with the first bit - the gap between the top sides and the rest is even higher now - but the points totals to win the league aren't as different from our CL-winning era as I thought, it's just that Liverpool and City had a couple of mad recent seasons (2018/19 and 21/22) where they both stomped on the rest of the league harder than any of our rivals in the Fergie years did. Looking at the points needed to beat the runners-up in the last five seasons:

2022/23 - 85
21/22 - 93
20/21 - 75
19/20 - 82
18/19 - 98

And in our last five years under Fergie:

2012/13 - 79
2011/12 - 89
2010/11 - 72
2009/10 - 86
2008/09 - 87

2007/08 - 86 ( left this one out of the comparison to make it 5 seasons each side)

The average is higher for the current era (87 vs 83) but mostly because of those two mad seasons in bold (on the flipside, 2010/11 was an outlier in the other direction for us). The median is actually 85 for the last five years, and 86 in Fergie's last five.

It would compete for the title, certainly.

The idea that it would walk the league is a bit silly though. That side didn't walk the actual league it competed in. The title race went down to the last day against Avram Grant's Chelsea.

Avram Grant's Chelsea were also in the final of the Champions League that same season, and a penalty away from winning it. They were clearly one of the best teams in Europe. And they weren't even setting the pace in the league for most of the season, let's not forget Arsenal were top for half the campaign.

Goes back to what I said about how good all the top PL teams were during that time. We won 3 titles in a row with 89, 87 and 90 points from 2006/09 while consistently going deep in Europe and the cups, while our rivals were doing the same. We reached the CL semi-final in 07, runners-up Chelsea did the same. We won the CL in 08, runners-up Chelsea literally faced us in the final. We reached the final in 09, runners-up Liverpool didn't make the semis but 2 of the other 3 teams that did were from the PL.

Compare that with City's 3-in-a-row: they won everything including the CL last season, sure, but their nearest league rivals (Arsenal) weren't even in the CL. The year before that, yes, they and 2nd-place Liverpool were the two best teams in Europe just as we and Chelsea were in 08. Then in 20/21, again, their nearest rivals in the league were us with a paltry 74 points, having been knocked out of the CL group stages (Chelsea won the CL, admittedly, but were garbage in the league).

No denying this City team is an all-time great. But we matched their achievements when the top PL teams were better than they are now.