Are Manchester United really top four contenders, or has the table lost all meaning?

In a chaotic season, Manchester United look even harder than most teams to figure out at the moment.

Yes, there will be far tougher tests than the awful Wolves side they thumped 4-1 on Monday night, but it’s still a result that moves them to 6th in the Premier League table, level on points with Chelsea.

Despite so much of the criticism that has come Ruben Amorim’s way , the Red Devils are also only six points behind rivals Manchester City . If they’d beaten Everton and West Ham they’d be only three points behind Arsenal right now.

Even if you frequently bet on football you’d probably struggle to work out what to make of this Man Utd side, who look as though they’re only ever one or two good results away from being in the title race, or an equal number of bad results away from finishing in the bottom half like they did last season.

Bryan Mbeumo celebrates scoring for Man United against Wolves (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

While the last decade or so has been characterised by the so-called ‘big six’ in the Premier League being some distance away from the rest, that’s no longer really the case as clubs like Newcastle United and Aston Villa have broken into the Champions League places in the last few years.

Indeed, Villa are once again in the top four, as are Crystal Palace, and only six points separate fourth from 13th place.

Can United break away from this cluster of teams? Perhaps we’ll have a better idea after seeing who navigates this busy Christmas period better, but it would also be fair to say that getting back to the top alongside the Arsenals and Citys of this world looks like a bigger challenge than ever.

In the past, United were just battling to get ahead of three or four teams, but now the Premier League as a whole is stronger than ever, and there’s no big secret as to how that’s happened – money.

Wage bills are strongly correlated with success, and for 2025/26 you can see that ten English clubs feature in the top 20 for biggest wage bills in Europe’s big five leagues…

Top 20 wage bills in Europe

So, yes, although we still have the usual suspects like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich in the top four, the reality of the modern Premier League is that United are competing against teams like Spurs and Villa, whose wage bills are higher than Serie A champions Napoli, while Nottingham Forest and West Ham aren’t far behind.

If it feels like the margins are so fine for MUFC at the moment, it’s because they are. It looks like it will be Arsenal or City for the title, five or six teams battling against relegation, while the rest of the places in the league table are up for grabs.

This is the new reality for United, let’s see how they grapple with it.