Manchester United are in crisis (again). Manager Michael Carrick's position has come under severe scrutiny following a terrible set of results and a public falling-out with his best player and captain, Bruno Fernandes. A run of three defeats -- 4-1 to Como, 3-0 to AFC Bournemouth and 2-0 to Chelsea -- brought about fresh discussion over the club's direction - although the dramatic 3-2 victory over Roma in the Champions League provided some respite.

Central to those discussions was the club's perceived fitness levels. It has been a theme all season as weekly graphics are dished out on social media that show the Red Devils ranking toward the bottom of the Premier League for almost every running statistic: distance covered, sprinting, high speed running, and more.

It's been this way since the beginning of the season, when summer signing Youri Tielemans said in an interview with former United defender Rio Ferdinand that their preseason training had been almost exclusively "ball work" and involved very little running. Then United promptly lost to newly promoted Hull City on the opening weekend.

Tottenham Hotspur have also been in crisis. Three wins on the bounce has hinted at the green shoots of recovery, but they failed to win a game before the three-week October international window, with manager Roberto De Zerbi suggesting his side lacked "physical condition" and vowing to try to help fix it during that extended break.

Running and fitness alone do not win games, but now that the season is underway, how fixable is this for these two teams? And in United's case, how concerned should we really be with those damning statistics?

The stats are grim

It is crucial to note that running data is highly contextual, does not necessarily correlate to success, and must be interpreted in conjunction with the team's tactical framework and style of play.

That being said, this, via Gradient Sports, looks bad.

United rank poorly compared to other Premier League teams in every running statistic presented, and they're bottom of the pile for average max speed. The gap between United and the team that has covered the most distance is 44.6 km, while the gap to the top sprinters is 5.34km.

Spurs are -- for the most part -- distinctly middling, although being 16th for distance covered is likely what's irking De Zerbi, a manager who strongly incorporates data into his preparations and thinking.

Now to reiterate, running more does not correlate to winning more, or vice versa. The team that has covered the most distance so far this season: Fulham, who are 15th. And the team who have sprinted the most: 14th-placed Ipswich Town.

So to interpret this properly, teams' tactical styles must be considered, as they condition the type and amount of running you do.

"Physical preparation hinges on your game model," Dave Carolan, a 30-year veteran of sports science in the Premier League and Football League, explains to ESPN. "How are your tactics physically expressed? Training is designed and used to develop the qualities you desire."

Teams who press high, chase the ball and defend big spaces are likely to clock up more kilometers run; teams who set up in a deep defensive block and counterattack frequently will probably sprint more. Conversely, averaging a huge amount of possession per game can sometimes skew physical statistics, as you may run less -- and you'll almost certainly sprint less -- when you have lots of the ball.

Through nine Premier League gameweeks, Newcastle United, Bournemouth and Brentford are among the top sprinters -- three teams noted for either high pressing or an intense, combative style. Fulham, who play at a high tempo in attack and leave big spaces in defense, have run the most overall.

All of this checks out, stylistically speaking.

So how do we define Man United and Spurs?

Man United have averaged 55% average possession across nine league games so far. It's an uptick on last season's average of 51.6%, but it's also a small sample size in which they've played against two of the four lowest possession teams in the division (Hull average 33.2%; Ipswich Town average 45.5%).

Carrick clearly wants his team to get their foot on the ball, but with the speed of Bryan Mbeumo, Marcus Rashford & Co. up front, they rightly open the door to attacking quickly, too.

The Red Devils' PPDA (how many opposition passes you allow before a defensive intervention of some kind) is 12.8, right in the middle of average for the league. They've also forced 56 high turnovers this term, which is the 11th-most in the league. In fact, they're the very definition of middling in just about every pressing statistic available.

This seems to have caused some consternation among some of the players; Fernandes' comments after the 4-1 defeat to Como in the UEFA Champions League would certainly suggest that. "I think we started on the wrong foot again, and they scored very early," he said. "Not much pressure on the ball, not many good movements without the ball. Sometimes when you give too much of the ball to these teams, they get confidence. It's a decision from the staff to not press man-to-man."

But he was right. United are not covering the ground and are not successfully committing to an effective press. They're also not averaging such a huge amount of possession that their low sprint distances (and, to an extent, their low distance covered) can be easily justified.

Spurs, on the other hand, are without a doubt a high-possession, high-pressing side. De Zerbi has always coached this style and while the 2025-26 season saw him arrive in March to try and stop the club's slide to relegation, often doing whatever he could to survive by any means necessary, his desired tactical footprint is starting to show this term.

Spurs average 63.2% possession -- only Man City (64.5%) average more -- while they're the lowest in the division in PPDA (8.5) and second for high turnovers (88). A team as proactive as this might well be expected to rank quite highly in running metrics, especially sprinting, but they're average at best.

Watch a handful of Spurs' first Premier League games this season and you'll see why. They started most of them in thunderous fashion, swarming all over their opponents as they sought an early goal, but then too often failed to find it and, after 30 minutes or so, faded physically.

That resulted in mistakes, concessions and losses. The defeats to Aston Villa (3-2) and Newcastle United (2-0), in particular, followed this pattern, and are likely what De Zerbi was referring to when he branded his side unfit.

Can it be fixed?

It's all well and good preaching an energetic, high-tempo playing style, but the key question is: Do you actually have the physical capacity to do it?

Multiple sources confirmed to ESPN that Man United and Spurs were among a small group of Premier League clubs who did little to no dedicated conditioning work over the summer. Tielemans effectively confirmed that to be the case at United in August, while De Zerbi admitted his Tottenham side weren't where they should be physically four games in.

And here's the tricky bit: It's really hard to recover from this -- especially for clubs with busy schedules.

"It is fundamentally very difficult to change your physical condition in the middle of the season -- especially in the Premier League, the most physically demanding league in the world," Carolan tells ESPN. "These squads are built full of international players and you have packed schedules with European games. You cannot do major physical preparation if you're always MD-1 or MD-2 (matchday minus one/two -- one or two days before the game). Opportunities to do added work are limited."

At the elite level, physical preparation for the season starts before preseason; it begins in the offseason, where players are away from the club, but are typically given running programs to follow so that they can report in a certain condition.

"Traditionally, we use the offseason as a foundational period. You build strength, endurance, speed, power, and repeatable sprinting ability. This is core aerobic work, at a high intensity," Carolan says. "Then preseason goes on top of the foundation. [From a physical perspective], you can go from a 5 (out of 10) to an 8, but you can't go from a 3 to an 8."

Common consensus among experts ESPN spoke to suggests players can gain roughly 20% in fitness through preseason, but any more is a stretch. Coming in undercooked can set you back for a whole year.

"If the players don't do the work in the close season, you probably can't get to the level you want," Carolan agrees. "Then if you have a disrupted or poor preseason, it's potentially a recipe for disaster."

This is particularly relevant to United, whose schedule is chock full due to their participation in the Champions League. Where is Carrick (or anyone who might replace him) going to find the time to ask his squad to put the hard yards in?

Equally important is whether the players truly have the capacity to improve. Tielemans, Kobbie Mainoo and Andrey Santos are among the least athletic midfielders in the league (all rank in the bottom half or towards the bottom of the Premier League in Gradient's sprinting and high-speed running metrics). It's a similar situation in defense, where Harry Maguire and Lisandro Martínez rank towards the bottom of their position group for sprinting and high-speed running, too.

Put simply: this is an unathletic team, so how athletic can they actually be, even at their peak?

Spurs at least have a chance at rectifying this; with no midweek commitments, there are windows to add in some heavy conditioning work. There's also some obvious physical prowess in the squad to be unlocked: Sandro Tonali is a formidable athlete, Mohammed Kudus and Sávio are extremely dynamic, while Micky van de Ven is one of the fastest center backs in the league.

De Zerbi seemed to suggest he used October's international break to try to address some of this, as a decent chunk of his players weren't called up for international duty. Though, they're starting from a long way back.

The extended 2026 FIFA World Cup, which ate all the way into mid-July, is a factor but not an excuse: Every other top club faced the same issue, and the number of minutes Spurs' players clocked at the tournament (3,232) pales in comparison to Bayern Munich (5,931) or Paris Saint-Germain (4,651); closer to home, Arsenal's players racked up over 4,000 and Man City just under 5,000, but they're both in fine physical fettle.

More problematic was their choice of preseason tour, as Spurs flew about as far as possible, to Australia and New Zealand, and in doing so traded valuable conditioning time for time sitting on planes. It is little wonder they entered the season undercooked and opened with a 3-0 loss to Brentford.

For Spurs, things are potentially fixable, and they are starting to turn things around. But the same can't be said for Man United, whose players only had 2,533 minutes of action at the World Cup, and must now find a way to compensate and compromise for the next six months -- or else the current speculative talk of a relegation battle could become an unfortunate reality.