🗳️ Man Utd fans want top four over trophies, rate Pep's team over Fergie | OneFootball

Despite frustrations over recent business, fans are quietly confident about Manchester United’s summer’s transfer activity heading into the new season.

Sky Bet have conducted surveys with fans of all 20 Premier League clubs ahead of 2023/24.

And 14% of the league’s supporters believe Mason Mount is the best signing of the summer (beaten only by Declan Rice and Alexis Mac Allister), while a further 4% give that honour to new goalkeeper André Onana.

An unsurprising 94% of United fans think Mount will be a hit at Old Trafford and others agree: 69% of all Premier League fans and 75% of Chelsea supporters begrudgingly admit he’ll thrive in his new environment.

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In fact, only Arsenal and Liverpool are ranked better across the division for their summer business but, despite optimism about this window and in general since Erik ten Hag’s hiring, United fans rank their activity in the market during that period at a 5.3 out of 10 on average.

Heading into the season, United fans on average are predicting a fourth place finish (although a bold 4% do foresee the title moving back across Manchester) and 63% of them would prefer a top four berth to securing silverware.

Marcus Rashford will be key to any of those hopes and there may be a hometown bias when it comes to the forward, with 18% of his own fans regarding him as the Premier League’s best player, compared to just 6% overall.

Of course, what would some fan polling be without a look at local rivalry … though United fans do appear surprisingly gracious on that front.

In total, 37% of their own supporters believe the Pep Guardiola-era Manchester City side is the best in Premier League history, although 77% also think they should be stripped of their 2009-2018 titles if found guilty of Financial Fair Play breaches.

Fans of other sides do side with United historically when it comes to the treble debate, with 59% of all Premier League fans believing Alex Ferguson’s 1999 side are better than City’s 2023 vintage.

But will those glory days return?

Supporters believe so, with a hefty 87% of United’s fanbase believing that the title will return to Old Trafford within the next five years, while the league overall think there is a 47% chance of them doing so.

Whether or not happens may hinge on the club’s contentious ownership situation.

Among United’s fans, 76% don’t think the Glazer family actually do want to sell the club but if they do, 65% want Jim Ratcliffe to take the reins.