Both Manchester City and Manchester United have dropped down the latest rankings of football clubs, with the former having been displaced as the world’s top side.
FiveThirtyEight have published their latest Global Club Soccer Rankings, which ranks the best teams in club football to give them a ranking based on their Soccer Power Index.
SPI is FiveThirtyEight's best estimate of a team's overall strength, consisting of an offensive rating and defensive.
Offensive ratings refer to the number of goals a specific team is expected to score against an average team on a neutral field, and defensive ratings represent the number of goals the team will be expected to concede.
These, in turn, produce an overall SPI rating, which represents the percentage of available points — a win is worth three points, a tie worth one point, and a loss worth zero points — the team would be expected to take if that match were played over and over again, and they are then given a position in the rankings based on that rating.
And the latest table doesn’t make for good reading for United fans, with their club falling further down the pecking order amid their recent poor form.
Without a win in their last four Premier League games, and following on from their humiliating 5-0 defeat to Liverpool at the weekend, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side drop further from the top 10 of the world’s top sides.
They now find themselves 13th in the rankings with an SPI of 80.9, with Italian champions Inter Milan having overtaken them.
That places United behind City, Liverpool and Chelsea, who all sit in the top five of the rankings, although Pep Guardiola’s side have lost their position as the world’s best team.
That accolade has gone to Bayern Munich, despite their surprise 5-0 thrashing at the hands of Borussia Monchengladbach on Wednesday.
City drop down to second, with Liverpool close behind them in third, while Chelsea are unmoved in fifth behind fourth-placed Ajax.
The Spanish trio of Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and managerless Barcelona occupy the next three positions, while PSG and RB Leipzig make the rest of the top 10.
FiveThirtyEight’s Global Club Soccer Rankings top 20
1 – Bayern Munich
2 – Manchester City
3 – Liverpool
4 – Ajax
5 – Chelsea
6 – Real Madrid
7 – Atletico Madrid
8 – Barcelona
9 – PSG
10 – RB Leipzig
11 – Inter Milan
12 – Borussia Dortmund
13 – Manchester United
14 – Napoli
15 – RB Salzburg
16 – Juventus
17 – Porto
18 – Sevilla
19 – Real Sociedad
20 – Atalanta
