Man Utd have been ‘too big to fail’ for 12 years now; what a myth…

Manchester United are ‘too big’ to struggle, are they? Michael Owen reckons so…

We’ve been saying this for over a decade now.

David Moyes inherited a title-winning side back in 2013, when Sir Alex Ferguson retired, but he didn’t last the season as Man Utd finished seventh in the Premier League.

They had won the Premier League at a canter, accumulating 89 points, in 2012/13, so Man Utd were “too big” for 2013/14 to be anything but a one-off.

Well…

It’s now 2025 and Man Utd haven’t won the Premier League title since Sir Alex’s final season. They’ve only qualified for the Champions League six times in that period, and have not made it past the quarter-finals, which is exactly how far Moyes got them.

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Despite their struggles on the pitch, Man Utd remain one of the biggest clubs in the world, but that’s proving to be far from enough to guarantee a resurgence.

They have finished 15th and 8th in the last two seasons, both of which were worst-ever Premier League campaigns.

They keep throwing money at the playing squad, but players consistently struggle to thrive at Old Trafford. World-class players have come and gone over the last 12 years, and hardly any of them have actually performed at a world-class level for Man Utd. Bruno Fernandes and Zlatan Ibrahimovic come to mind, while Casemiro and Cristiano Ronaldo were world-class for a year.

Glenn Moore of The Independent stated in January 2014 that Man Utd were ‘too big to drift into mediocrity’. They’re not — and they have.

Eight months later, Premier League chief Richard Scudamore argued that Man Utd were ‘too big to continue struggling’.

Between now and then, countless pundits and supporters have said the Red Devils are simply ‘too big to continue to fail’. At one point, they were ‘too big to go down’. We argued otherwise.

And yet, in the big 2025, we still have former Man Utd players claiming it’s only a matter of time until they are successful again, with their main argument simply being that they’re “too big” for that not to be the case.

Ex-Man Utd striker Owen wants head coach Ruben Amorim to provide something tangible to give supporters hope that he can bring back the glory days — something Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and Erik ten Hag all failed to do.

“The United fans will be patient if they can see something,” Owen said. “I don’t think anybody expects them to go from what they’ve been over the last 10 years to suddenly winning the league.

“The supporters just want to see a bit of a plan, even if they get beaten. They want to see some progress, something to hang their hat on.

“I think that’s the bit that Manchester United fans are struggling with now – renewed hope with a new manager. Amorim hasn’t produced results and hasn’t given them anything to think that things could be hugely better in the future, and that’s the problem.

“Pundits and fans do just go around in circles. When you look at what’s been wrong with Manchester United over the years, it was the manager who was blamed.

“These projects do happen with the big teams. It happened at Liverpool in the 90s, It happened slightly to Arsenal after [Arsene] Wenger left, trying to find the right manager, the right players, the right fix.

“It’s taken a while at Manchester United, and although there’s no sign of them doing it now, it will click eventually. It might be two years, might be four, it might be six, it might even be 10 years, but everyone knows that Manchester United will win the Premier League again.

“They’re too big, too rich and too good of a club to not do that. It’s just a question of when they can get it all right.”

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