MANCHESTER — It was the football equivalent of a cry for help by Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim. By selecting defensive midfielder Kobbie Mainoo as a centre-forward in what resulted in a 2-0 home defeat against Crystal Palace, Amorim was making a desperate plea for somebody, somewhere, to end his team’s goal-scoring nightmare.
United have now lost five of their last six Premier League home games, scoring just four goals in that sequence, and are, in terms of points, as close to the relegation zone as they are to the top four. So naming Mainoo up front was perhaps an understandable roll of the dice by Amorim, because things could hardly get much worse.
Amorim would not have expected the 19-year-old to be the transformative player in front of goal, though, and that was the point.
With recognized centre-forwards Rasmus Højlund and Joshua Zirkzee having been so poor and out of their depth recently, and the out-of-favour Marcus Rashford close to sealing a loan move to Aston Villa, Amorim’s selection was a well-timed message to United’s recruitment team that they simply have to sign a striker before Monday’s transfer deadline at 11 p.m. GMT/6 p.m. ET.
Efforts are being made to seal a loan deal for either Bayern Munich forward Mathys Tel — an inconsistent and raw 19-year-old — or Chelsea’s injury-prone Christopher Nkunku before the deadline. But even if United are successful in signing one of those forwards, it will be little more than a sticking plaster to solve a much bigger issue.
United have been down this path before and it has ended in failure. They signed Odion Ighalo on loan from Shanghai Shenhua in January 2020 and he failed to score a Premier League goal for United, while Wout Weghorst had a six-month loan from Burnley in January 2023 and also left Old Trafford without scoring once in the league.
When United get desperate, they tend to make mistakes. Neither Tel nor Nkunku are playing for their parent clubs, so they are just as likely to add to United’s problems as solve them. “We are trying everything to improve the team without repeating the mistakes of the past,” Amorim said pointedly, when asked about the possibility of signing a forward on deadline day, after the Palace defeat.
Zirkzee is 23 years old and Højlund celebrates his 22nd birthday on Tuesday, so both are still young players learning their trade and doing so in the absence of more experienced forwards alongside them. At times, they have both looked lost amid the United maelstrom and any help in terms of lifting the goal-scoring burden from their shoulders will only be a positive for them, but the harsh reality is that neither look, or have looked, good enough to play for a club of United’s stature.
Despite Amorim’s insistence that leaving them on the bench against Palace was not a reflection of Højlund or Zirkzee’s ability, it is difficult to imagine any manager choosing a defensive midfielder ahead of a striker if they had any belief in them.
Unsurprisingly, the Mainoo experiment failed to pay off. The England midfielder has no attacking instinct or awareness and he looked like a square peg in a round hole.
In the first half, both Alejandro Garnacho and Amad Diallo delivered good balls into the box, but Mainoo was nowhere near any of them. They were crosses that a proper centre-forward would thrive on, but the deliveries simply bobbled through the danger area without a red shirt in sight.
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Julien Laurens breaks down latest on Mathys Tel’s transfer rumors
Julien Laurens explains why there is so much demand for Mathys Tel, despite not being able to crack the Bayern Munich lineup.
The first half ended with United having failed to score in the opening 45 minutes for the 18th time in 24 Premier League games this season, although Mainoo did hit the post with a mis-hit shot in the seventh minute.
Amorim waited until the 70th minute to call upon Højlund and Zirkzee from the bench — six minutes after Jean-Philippe Mateta had scored the first of his two goals for Palace — and the two forwards only served to underline their coach’s decision to omit them from his starting XI. Højlund frustrated the crowd with his poor touch; Zirkzee was ponderous and wasteful in possession.
But that has been the tale of United’s season with their inadequate forwards. Rashford has been dispensed with, while Højlund and Zirkzee are examples of United’s flawed recruitment policy that targets potential rather than finished article.
It is why they are approaching another transfer deadline day needing to find a quick fix. This time, United really have to get it right.
