Man United snubbed in 'Global Club Rankings' behind six rival sides

Manchester United have dropped lower than six other Premier League teams in the world ranking of football clubs and don't even make the top 15.

It has not exactly been a vintage decade for United seeing as they haven't managed to win the league title in the 10 years since Sir Alex Ferguson left Old Trafford.

Last season was the third time in that spell they've not even finished inside the top five as Ralf Rangnick led them to a fifth place finish.

At least Erik ten Hag has brought back some pride this season, finishing fourth and winning the Carabao Cup, with the FA Cup final against Manchester City on Saturday still to come.

There is still plenty to be done at Old Trafford before they're regularly competing at the top of the table again, especially as they wait for a takeover to happen.

Proof of exactly how far off they are from City comes in the form of the 'alternative' league table which shows where teams would be if their xG was truer to form.

And that's part of the reason that they're also down in 16th place in the index of world football teams, with six of their domestic rivals above them.

Statisticians FiveThirtyEight have put together their end of season power rankings of the best teams from around the globe, with City unsurprisingly leading the pack.

Liverpool, Arsenal, Newcastle United, Aston Villa and even Brighton & Hove Albion are above United in the rankings.

The world top 20. Image: FiveThirtyEight

FiveThirtyEight use data from ESPN and OPTA to work out how each team would perform both offensively and defensively against an average side in the league on a neutral ground.

The result of that gives each team an SPI rating and that works out which teams would win, lose and draw to each other to work out the points.

As a result United are only ranked as the 16th best team in the world although earlier in the season they were actually out of the top 20.

The top three sides on the list, City, Bayern Munich and Barcelona all won their domestic league titles this season though Bayern were very fortunate.

It looked like their run of 10 years winning the Bundesliga in-a-row was going to come to an end, only for Borussia Dortmund to throw it all away on the final day of the campaign.

Topics: Football, Premier League, Manchester United, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Brighton And Hove Albion, Chelsea, Liverpool, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a journalist for SPORTbible with over eight years of experience. Passionate about all sports, he mainly covers football and F1 - Daniel Ricciardo once spent an entire interview referring to him as 'Ryan Gosling,' still his proudest moment.

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