Top 5 is plausible... but you can surely see why United fans would be miffed (even a tad annoyed) by any talk of GOATness at this point? Considering we’ve won three back to back titles, twice, since the turn of the century. Both whilst also winning the Champions League. Not to mention the two back to back titles and two doubles we won in the decade before.
So if football does indeed get better with age, and remember the good as great, and the great as imperious...Then how are those achievements even debatably comparable with this 2/3rds of a City season? That won’t be invincible, can’t be a Treble, and hasn’t even matched our largest leadership gap yet? *
You can see why that opinion would seem super weird & short sighted to any Utd fan over about 12, yeah? Especially to those of us who remember Mourinho’s Chelsea side breaking the points record being seen as irrefutable evidence that the very idea of competition in football was over for at least the next twenty years. And how that went.
Of the 2 and a bit decades United have dominated this League, which titles do you remember most? Is it the ones where we ran away with the title and regularly thrashed our rivals? Like 2001, when we beat our closest competitors 6-1 and won it by 16 points? Remember that? Or maybe it was 2000? Where we won by a still held record of 18 points*? Presumably by defulat the PL’s greatest ever team by your metric, no?
Or is what you actually remember, the Treble winners? (Whose title went right down to the last day.) Or the 2008 “Roo & Ron” Double winners? (Who also went to the last day) or perhaps the 1996 “don’t win anything with kids!” Double winners? (Last day again. And after an epic, unlikely, 12 point overhaul.) Or maybe even the Cantona inspired ‘94 double winners? (An utterly dominant season of era defining sexy football, still won with only two games to spare)...
Point being, sure, City are a great side atm, no question. But football posterity remembers drama, romance and narrative more than dominance and statistics. So even if you win by 30 points in the end, it’ll still be less of a deal to most than the “Aguerooooooo!” season (especially if it’s just the one)...because that’s what really gets better with age. And a side with no competition, little youth or English connection, and no wider historical or redemptive narrative to speak of (and a manger who’ll always be more associated with his homegrown success at Barca) is not a side that I’d bet heavily on making a truly massive dent in the public consciousness, beyond a grudging concession that “yeah, that team we’re alright that year”...
And we should know, because we’ve had several dominant sides before. Sides that have won the League by even more points than you’re on course to. And the fact no one seems to remember it, speaks to just how unspectacularly history remembers those kind of seasons. Even when you’re Manchester United.
Of course, if you win the CL in a blaze of glory, that’ll start to build a legend. But anything less will leave a debatable legacy IMO. Because (and I hope this doesn’t come across as bias or bitter, because I genuinely don’t think it is) aside from KBD, and being undoubtedly very good, I can’t think of anything that’s actually very interesting about this side. Narrative wise, I mean. There’s no story there. It’s just a really good, well assembled side. Perhaps Sterling on a mild redemptive arc?