If someone had asked you at the start of the season which teams would make up the top seven in the Premier League at this point, you would probably have said the current seven. You just may have got the order wrong.

But if you’d looked at the table in September it was a different story.

After the weekend of the Manchester derby, United lost 2-1 at home to Manchester City and went three points behind their cross-city league leaders at that point. Everton thumped Sunderland 3-0 on the Monday night shortly afterwards, and they moved into second place. Both United and Everton were seemingly in good form: United’s defeat was a just a blip – and besides, they looked better in the second half – whilst Ronald Koeman was working miracles at Everton. Or so we thought.

What could have been a top of the table clash this weekend between Manchester United and Everton – two teams with a history in a tie that’s always juicy – is now a battle between two also-rans who are just trying to salvage the pieces of a poor season at this point. And qualify for the Europa League.

Both clubs are currently closer to the relegation zone than they are to the league leaders, and both clubs are underperforming severely given how well they started the season.

For Everton, the problem has been their cohesion in recent weeks. When Koeman took over, he brought in Ashley Williams to marshall his defence, and it seemed to have worked – they conceded only one goal in their first three games. But since then it’s been a different story. They’ve conceded 12 goals since then, including five against Chelsea, and keeping a clean sheet only once, at home to West Ham.

For United, it’s been a similar story. The last time they kept a clean sheet and won the game was on 27th August against Hull City. Since then, they’ve only kept two: one whilst earning a dull point at Anfield, and one in a failure to break down Burnley at home.

For a coach whose organisational skills are supposed to be world class, that must point to some serious failings by Jose Mourinho. He is a manager, after all, who went 38 games in 2004/05 and conceded only 15 goals – still a Premier League record. His goalkeeper, Petr Cech, kept 21 clean sheets that season. To put that into context, Mourinho’s side would have to keep clean sheets in 17 of their remaining 25 Premier League games in order to match that record.

And you might think that all of this bodes well for the neutral when the two teams meet on Sunday. But the truth is that United and Everton combined have only managed two more Premier League goals than Liverpool have this season. Neither have scored more than Crystal Palace, and Everton (16) are beaten by West Brom (17) in the goals scored stakes – though United (18) are only one goal better off.

So there’s your problem, Everton and Manchester United: score more goals and keep more clean sheets.

Who says football isn’t a simple game?

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