★ Moneyball Original · Opinion

Como gave Manchester United a lesson in how to run a football club

By Moneyball Editorial · published 2026-10-24

Como 4-1 Manchester United (Champions League, 21 October 2026). On a lake in Lombardy, a club that was playing in Serie D seven years ago taught one of the richest clubs in the world what a football club is supposed to look like. This is not a column about one result. It is about two ways of running a club, and what the numbers say about each of them.

There is a line in Indonesian football talk that fits this better than anything in English: Como ngajarin United. Como taught them. It is a little cruel and completely fair. Como were bought in 2019 by the Hartono brothers, the Indonesian family behind Djarum, when the club was in Serie D after a bankruptcy. They rebuilt it from the fourth tier to Serie A in five years, came back to the top flight in 2024 for the first time in 21 years, and put the team in the hands of Cesc Fàbregas, who arrived as a player in 2022 and stayed to coach it. Manchester United, in the same seven years, have had more managers than Como have had divisions.

The scoreline was not the lesson

Results lie in football more often than fans like to admit. A deflection, a red card, a goalkeeper's best night: any single match can be decided by things that will not happen again. That is why Moneyball never judges a team on one result. But a result can still be the moment when something everyone half-knew becomes impossible to ignore. What was impossible to ignore at the Sinigaglia was not that Como scored. It was that every Como player seemed to know what the player next to him was about to do, and United's did not.

That is not talent. United's wage bill dwarfs Como's, and player for player United should win most of these matches. It is design: a way of playing chosen by the club, a coach hired to deliver it, and players bought because they fit it. When that chain holds, a squad plays above the sum of its wages. When it breaks, it plays below it. Watch Como and you see the chain. Watch United and you see the breaks.

Como: one idea, from the owner to the left-back

The Como project is easy to mock from a distance: rich owners, a famous coach, Thierry Henry among the shareholders, a lake that looks good on television. Look closer and it is the most old-fashioned thing in football: a club with one idea. The owners chose a style (possession with a purpose, technical players, young players with resale value) and hired the coach who embodies it. The scouts recruit to that style. Players who arrive know what they are being asked to do, and players who leave are sold at a profit to fund the next ones.

The numbers this season back the picture. In Serie A Como are 5th on points (14 from 7 matches), 6th on expected points, and 5th on Pi-rating. They are 3.2 points ahead of their chances, so some of the table is good fortune; the football underneath is still top-half. They keep 61.0% of the ball (2nd in Serie A) and complete 89.7% of their passes (2nd).

United: a hundred ideas, none of them the club's

Since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013, Manchester United have hired David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Erik ten Hag and Rúben Amorim on long contracts, with caretakers in between. Each one was a different idea of football. Van Gaal wanted control, Mourinho wanted counter-attacks, Solskjær wanted speed in transition, Ten Hag wanted to press and build like Ajax, Amorim wanted a back three with wing-backs. Each one was given money to buy players for his idea, and each one left those players behind for a successor who wanted something else.

The result is a squad built in layers, like rock: a stratum of Mourinho signings under a stratum of Solskjær signings under a stratum of Ten Hag signings, with Amorim's wing-backs on top. Nobody in that squad was bought for the same plan as everybody else. That is why United so often look like eleven decent footballers who have just been introduced.

The low points are well known. Seven-nil at Anfield under Ten Hag in March 2023. A contract extension for Ten Hag in the summer of 2024 and the sack four months later. A sporting director, Dan Ashworth, waited for through a long dispute with Newcastle and gone after five months. Around 250 jobs cut in the name of efficiency while the transfer spending went on. Fifteenth in the Premier League in 2024/25, the club's worst finish since relegation in 1974, and a Europa League final lost to Tottenham. Amorim did not see out January 2026. None of these is a footballing problem. They are management problems that show up on the pitch.

The numbers say United's results are no accident

Every United crisis comes with the same excuse: the performances are better than the results. That is a testable claim, and expected points test it. Take every league match, take the expected goals of both sides, and run them through the Dixon-Coles score matrix that powers our Match Board: out comes the number of points that performance usually earns.

United have 7 league points from chances worth 10.9: on this evidence the football is a little better than the table, and the problem is converting it. In the Premier League they are 13th on points, 7th on expected points and 10th on Pi-rating. After shrinking their xG margin toward the league average (a hot or cold month should not decide a verdict), our projection puts them on about 55 points at the end of the season, 8th in the league.

Their finishing is about what their chances deserve, so there is no hidden swing coming either way.

The style numbers say the same thing in another language: Pressure Index 61.6 (4th of 20), possession 55.6% (7th of 20), key passes 14.7 a match (1st of 20), expected goals against 1.17 a match (3rd of 20). There is an identity in some of these numbers; what is missing is the consistency to turn it into points.

The toxic-workplace test: what happens to players who leave

Fans and former players have called Old Trafford a toxic place to work for years. "Toxic" is a feeling, not a statistic. But there is a fair way to test it: if a club makes players worse, they should get better when they leave, and new arrivals should get worse when they come in. The famous cases point that way. Scott McTominay was sold to Napoli in 2024 and was named the best player in Serie A as Napoli won the title. Antony went on loan to Real Betis in January 2025 and played like the winger United thought they had bought. Marcus Rashford rediscovered his game away from Manchester. Anecdotes are not data, so here is the data: every player in our database who played real minutes for United last season and plays somewhere else now, and every player who did the opposite, with their average match rating then and now.

Joined United

The players who arrived are rating −0.07 per match against their last season elsewhere. Worse after arriving: the environment, not the recruitment, looks like the problem.

Match ratings are minute-weighted across the top five leagues and the European cups. Players need 600 minutes last season and 270 this season to appear. Ratings in different leagues are not perfectly comparable, so read the direction, not the decimals.

Even our own model was too kind to United

Honesty matters more than looking clever, so here is ours. Before the match, Moneyball's own model gave United more credit than the football on the pitch deserved. Part of that is in the method: Pi-ratings and last season's figures carry memory on purpose, because over a full season memory beats overreaction. But memory also carries reputation, and United's reputation is worth more than their football. Since then we have changed how our Match Board chooses what to highlight: the side the model rates stronger, on the outcome most likely to come good, rather than the reading that only looks good on paper. It is the same lesson Como gave United. Do not confuse a big name with a strong team.

What United should copy from Como

1. The club chooses the football, not the coach. Como's owners decided how Como would play and hired the coach to deliver it. United hire a coach and let the coach decide what United are, then start again two years later.
2. Recruit for a role, not a name. Moneyball Scout rates every player only against players in the same role, because a great player in the wrong role is an expensive problem. United's squad is full of players bought for a system that left with the manager who wanted it.
3. Give the plan time, and the coach a frame. Patience is not the same as doing nothing. A club with a clear idea can change coaches without changing direction.
4. Make players better. The best clubs are places where players' numbers go up. Track it, and treat a squad whose ratings fall after they arrive as a warning about the club, not only about the players.
5. Judge on chances, not headlines. Expected goals and expected points tell you months before the table does whether a project is working. Como's tell a clear story. So do United's.

The Moneyball view

Manchester United are not a bad club because they lost to Como. They lost to Como because they have spent a decade being run as a collection of short-term fixes, and Como have spent seven years being run as one long plan. This season United are 7th in the Premier League on expected points and Como are 6th in Serie A; money can close a talent gap in one window, but it cannot buy an idea. That is the lesson. Whether United have the humility to learn it from a club on the shores of Lake Como is the only question that matters.

This is an opinion column by Moneyball Editorial. The figures update themselves after every round, and the sentences around them change with the figures.

Manchester United and Como in the Stats Centre

Questions

Who owns Como?

Como are owned by the Hartono brothers, the Indonesian family behind the Djarum group, who bought the club in 2019 when it was in Serie D, Italy's fourth tier. The club reached Serie A in 2024.

Is Manchester United a toxic club?

That word is an opinion. What the numbers can show is a club whose results match its chances (it is not unlucky), and how players' ratings change when they leave the club or join it, which this column tracks.

What are expected points?

Each match's expected goals (xG) run through a Dixon-Coles score model to give the points that performance usually earns. A club far above its expected points is usually riding luck or finishing that does not last.

Where do the numbers come from?

Sportmonks match and player data, read by the Moneyball engine, and updated every time the site updates.

Tags Como Manchester United Como vs Manchester United Man United toxic Manchester United crisis Cesc Fàbregas Hartono INEOS Serie A 2026/27 Premier League 2026/27 expected goals football opinion Moneyball