Man Utd v Roma: the table says mismatch, the football says level

The short answerOn our ratings Roma (1722, 15th in the world) and Manchester United (1712, 17th) are 10 points apart, about one goal every 18 games. Roma's points match the best football in Serie A. United have 7 points where their football deserved about 15.

Here is the number that the league tables hide. Roma arrive at Old Trafford with 24 points from ten Serie A games. Manchester United have 7 from nine Premier League games. One side is in a title race and the other is above the relegation places on goal difference. And yet on our ratings, which judge every club on the football it plays rather than the points it collects, the two are 10 points apart. Roma are 15th in the world on 1722. United are 17th on 1712.

On our scale about 180 points is worth a goal a game. Ten points is roughly one goal every 18 matches. That is not a gap. It is a rounding error. Tonight's game is being sold as a crisis club against a side in form, and both halves of that are true. But the football underneath the results says this is one of the most even fixtures of the Champions League week.

The reason the tables and the ratings disagree so badly is luck, in the specific sense we use it: the gap between the points a club has won and the points the quality of its chances deserved. Roma's points match their football almost exactly. United's do not, and the size of that shortfall is now one of the biggest in Europe.

Ten points apart: why the table lies about this game

Start with Roma, because they are the more straightforward case. Their football this season deserved about 24.7 points from ten league games, and they have 24. That is the best deserved-points record in Serie A, ahead of Juventus and Inter. It is not a team riding its finishing or its goalkeeper. It is a team doing the things that win matches, and being paid for them at the going rate. Our luck label for Roma is the dullest one we have: fair.

Their trend is the other strong signal. Roma's rating is rising, and quite sharply, across the last few weeks. This is Gian Piero Gasperini's side getting better as it goes, not a hot streak with nothing underneath it. Our style profile picks out one thing above everything else: shot quality. Roma's average chance is among the best in Italy, well above the league norm. They do not shoot from everywhere. They work the ball until the chance is a good one.

There is one caveat worth stating plainly. Roma's schedule has been on the soft side. Of the 20 Serie A clubs, they rank 15th on the strength of the opponents they have faced. Our ratings already adjust for that, which is part of why a side with the best football in Italy sits 15th in the world rather than in the top ten. Their plausible world rank runs from 7 to 30.

Now United. Their football this season deserved about 15.0 points from nine games. They have 7. The difference, -8.0 points, makes them the 3rd-unluckiest team in the Premier League, behind only Nottingham Forest and Sunderland, and among the five unluckiest in Europe's big five leagues. On deserved points they are 6th in England. In the actual table they are 17th.

That gap is not explained by an easy fixture list going wrong. United have faced the 5th-hardest schedule in the Premier League so far. They have played good sides and, on the chances created and allowed, mostly held their own. Their plausible world rank runs from 8 to 34, which overlaps almost entirely with Roma's.

United are owed eight points, and the swing is the story

The first thing to say about United's shortfall is that it is not a defence of the results. Nine games without a win in all competitions is a real run, and so is a 3-0 home defeat by Bournemouth followed by a 2-0 loss at Chelsea. Points that should have been won and were not are still gone. What the shortfall does tell you is where the problem sits. On our numbers, United's issue is not that they cannot create or that they are being carved open. It is that the conversion at both ends has gone against them, game after game.

Our style profile for United picks out shot volume. They take a lot of shots, well above the Premier League average. That is not always a virtue. A side that shoots often from poor positions can look busy and score little, and some of United's volume is exactly that. But our deserved-points measure already weighs each chance by its quality, and it still says United should have about twice the points they have. The volume is not all hopeful long shots.

The second thing to say is that this is a reversal. Last season United finished 6.6 points ahead of what their football deserved. This season they are 8.0 behind it. That is a swing of 14.6 points in luck alone, and it goes a long way to explaining why a side whose underlying level has dipped only modestly now looks, from the table, like a team in free fall. Part of the credit Michael Carrick received last season was luck. Part of the blame he is receiving now is too.

Roma make a useful comparison here, because their luck last season was almost identical: 6.4 points ahead of their football. This season it has settled at -0.7, which is as close to neutral as it gets. One club has had its luck revert to normal. The other has had it overshoot in the other direction. That is the whole difference between a title challenge and a relegation scrap, and it is far less than the tables suggest.

None of this means United are a good team in hiding. Their trend is falling. Our rating has come down over recent weeks as the results and the underlying numbers both drifted, and the rating is the part that does not care about luck. United are, on our numbers, a top-20 club in the world playing like one most weeks, but no longer pushing towards the top ten. That is the honest version, and it is why the case for sacking Carrick looks weak to us without looking absurd. our piece on carrick's sack risk sets out why the timing of a sack matters as much as the results.

Team news: both sides short in the same places

The team news shapes the game more than usual tonight, because both coaches are short in the same area. United are without Luke Shaw, Patrick Dorgu, Marcus Rashford, Benjamin Šeško and Manuel Ugarte. Carrick said on Monday that Dorgu was back in training but would not be involved. That leaves the left side of United's defence thin again, a problem they have patched with Diogo Dalot and Noussair Mazraoui in recent weeks.

Roma have it worse in midfield. Gasperini has confirmed that Lorenzo Pellegrini, Paulo Dybala and Manu Koné are all out, and goalkeeper Mile Svilar is still missing. He said on Monday that Roma's options in midfield were stretched and that 17 players were ready. Bryan Cristante and Marten de Roon, who played for Gasperini at Atalanta, are expected to form the central pair, with Matías Soulé and Donyell Malen in the attacking positions. Pierluigi Gollini is expected in goal.

That matters for the style match-up. Roma's whole approach is about the quality of the chance, and quality chances come from the players who make the final pass. Dybala and Pellegrini are two of those players. Without them, Roma lean more on Soulé and on their wing-backs, and on Malen's finishing. United's volume game, by contrast, does not depend as heavily on one creator. If Bruno Fernandes and Matheus Cunha can get United into the box often enough, the sheer number of attempts is the thing most likely to make tonight different from the last nine games.

The goalkeeping change is the other detail worth noting. Svilar has been one of Roma's most important players. Gollini is an experienced deputy, but a change in goal is exactly the kind of thing that can move a single game away from what the chances say. For a United side whose finishing has underperformed for weeks, a less familiar goalkeeper is not a small thing.

What our numbers say about tonight

We do not make predictions in percentages, and we are not going to start with a game this close. What our numbers do say is clear enough. On the football, these two are level. Roma's points total is a fair reflection of a very good side. United's points total is not a fair reflection of what they have been, and the longer the shortfall runs, the more likely it is to narrow rather than widen. That is what short-run luck tends to do.

The public reading of the game is that Roma are clear favourites and United are playing for their manager's job. Our reading is that the second part may be true and the first is not supported by the underlying data. A United win would be called a shock. On the numbers, it would not be.

The other point worth making is about what a single result can and cannot tell us. If Roma win comfortably, it will be read as proof that United are as bad as the table says. If United win, it will be read as a turning point. Neither reading is quite right. One game moves a rating by a few points. The thing to watch is not the score but whether United keep creating as they have, and whether Roma, without three of their creative players, can still produce chances of the quality that has made them the best team in Italy on performance.

Where both clubs stand in the wider ranking

In this week's World Ranking, published this morning, Barcelona, Arsenal and Bayern München are the top three, six points apart. Roma at 15th and United at 17th sit in the band just below the elite, alongside clubs like Inter, Chelsea and Brighton. That band is crowded, and a run of good or bad weeks moves a club through it quickly. United's plausible range, from 8 to 34, shows how much room there is in both directions.

The Luck Table in the same article puts United among the most short-changed clubs in Europe, alongside Forest, Monza, Villarreal and Sunderland. Every club in that group is owed points on its football. None is guaranteed to collect them. But if the football holds, the table should move towards the rating, not the other way round. For United, the question is whether the club gives that time to happen.

Every club's rating, schedule and luck figure is on its club page, and the full table is in the world club ranking. How the ranking works explains the method in plain words.