Running to Stand Still

Three games into United’s pre-season, three weeks from the opening weekend. Nothing has been won or lost yet. But if this is the squad that starts the season, it’s worth accepting that United have plenty of weaknesses which aren’t difficult to find.

The transfer window has a month left on paper, but if the big business is already done, the shape of Carrick’s squad for his first full season is visible. Perhaps there’s even enough in early pre-season to make some hasty judgements.

United are stronger in the middle of the park than they were last May but still short on numbers. They’re also thin at the back and out wide. The squad is perhaps one bad month of injuries in a packed schedule from a crisis.

Carrick needs more. The question three weeks out is whether anyone at the club is going to get it for him.

Let’s start with the good news, because there is some.

Andrey Santos is the signing United have needed since Casemiro’s legs went about halfway through his first season. He has fewer than 30 games of Premier League experience, and, given that, the £48 million fee paid to Chelsea looks hefty on paper. That’s an obvious caveat. After three games, he already looks like he belongs at United. Santos reads the game well, screens, and keeps the ball moving. His passing is excellent. There’s a calmness under pressure that fits what many believe to be the evolution of Michael Carrick’s tactical plan.

Most promising is his decision-making. He finds the forward pass when it’s on. When it isn’t, he chooses sensible options. That’s a minimum, but not something United’s midfield has reliably achieved in recent years.

There is a qualifier. Santos is a controller and not yet a destroyer. If he wants to become a top midfielder, he will need to refine the defensive side. Covering, duelling, space-eating when United lose the ball in transitional areas. Santos is no Aurelien Tchouameni, a player United would dearly love to buy. One of the world’s best at shutting down dangerous transitions.

Youri Tielemans is a touch harder to assess, because he’s yet to kick a ball in red. He captained Belgium to the World Cup quarter-finals, earned three weeks’ rest, and has only just turned up at Carrington. On profile alone, it’s an excellent purchase. Tielemans provides some of the best line-breaking passing numbers in the Premier League. He’s a carrier and a passer with genuine range. He’s a player who arrives late in the box and has the goals to show for it. And the £35 million release clause United activated at Villa is obviously sensible money, even with the hefty five-year contract.

Mason Mount’s pre-season complicates the picture without really changing some of the problems. He has played in central midfield throughout pre-season. The assumption now is that he’ll spend most of his time in a central role in the coming season, rather than in more advanced areas. Mount’s game intelligence and technical qualities allow for it; his physical presence and injury record pour doubt on how much he’ll contribute.

Three eights and a six is not a balanced midfield quorum. Santos has enjoyed a fine first three games in a United shirt, but he cannot bare the defensive load alone. Buy the shin-kicking ground-eater, and Carrick’s side will be much the better for it.

There is a complication in that Tielemans and Mainoo are probably incompatible. Not the same kind of player, exactly, but more impactful alongside a strong six.

In different ways, both carry, both progress the ball. Neither is poor off the ball, but both do their best work with it rather than without it. Both move the small well; Tieleman’s has the better passing range, Mainoo the better small spaces game. That makes Tielemans a competitor for Mainoo more than a partner for him. Two of them together, in the same midfield, is probably a combination that works in a particular kind of game: high possession, plenty of the ball, an opponent sitting deep and inviting United to pass around them. Against weaker opponents, at home, when United have total control, it’s fine.

Against anyone good, it’s a question. Two eights and no dueller in front of the back four is an invitation to concede too many in transition. Santos screens well, but he’s not a space-eating bully who’ll cover 50 yards of lateral ground. That’s how you get gaping holes in the middle of the pitch. That’s what United produced for two years under Ten Hag, and the club sacked him for it.

Which raises the tactical question: is the plan to have high possession every week, prioritising technicality over physicality?

If it is, a Mainoo-Tielemans axis with Mount and Santos for support makes more sense. It’s what United produced against Brighton on the final day of last season. In that case the absence of a space-eater matters less. After all, a team that keeps the ball doesn’t have to chase it.

If, as in much of the 17 games of Carrickball last season, United expect to spend plenty of time without the ball and play a more transitional style, then Mainoo-Tielemans is going to run into trouble.

We’ll know much more when the games that matter kick off. Carrickball, whatever it finally turns out to be, has so far meant control without much thrill: solid, sensible, occasionally soporific. The Santos and Tielemans purchases suggest that it is shifting towards something more possession-heavy, with a real focus on central progression.

Marcus Rashford is back, probably. That issue has been covered here recently. The short version is that for all the valid questions about his lifestyle and perceived commitment to the United cause, he does offer something otherwise lacking in the squad. He’s a one-v-one runner who attacks the space behind rather than dropping into it. He can be a genuine weapon. Barcelona didn’t take up an option to buy Rashford in the end; that decision was taken by the suits, not Hansi Flick. His 14 goals and 14 assists last season were a good return for a first season in another league.

But his massive wages are the story; around £15 million per year makes Rashford difficult to sell. He took a big pay cut to join Barcelona. Would he do so for a lesser destination in the next month?

What’s more interesting, three weeks out, is how his presence shapes United’s left side. It turns one squad option, Matheus Cunha, into two. It also creates a few issues about who lines up at left-back. Rashford’s best seasons have always been when accompanied by a marauder from behind. If he stays, United would do well to sign a top overlapping full-back. No surprise, perhaps, that there have been links to Lewis Hall recently.

If Rashford leaves, United could still do with a new left-back, but the club’s priority might shift to a forward who can stretch a defence in a way that Cunha, for all his brilliance, does not.

Same flank, different solution

Carrick might have to find options to United’s problems from within. Luke Shaw cannot play 50-plus games, and his injury-free season last time out was almost miraculous. Carrick seems reluctant to try Patrick Dorgu at the back, making the Dane a slightly awkward fit. The feeling around Old Trafford that Dorgu was an Amorim-specific signing has strengthened as his successor deploys the former Lecce player exclusively on the wing.

Harry Amass seems more likely to see the exit than find a route into the team, much to the disappointment of academy watchers. On the other side, Diogo Dalot is a study in consistency. Always fit, always willing, and always, at the moment that matters, lacking in quality.

Centre-back is a more difficult situation, because while there are plenty of options, doubts surround all of them. Matthijs de Ligt is out until the autumn. That’ll make it a year on the sidelines with a back injury. If he ever makes it back at all. Lisandro Martínez is injured again, which by now is less of a setback than a pattern. Harry Maguire is a year older, and there are more than a few hints in pre-season that he’s starting to look it.

That leaves Leny Yoro and Ayden Heaven needing big seasons. They’re both hugely talented, in different ways, but also raw. Heaven is a fine passer and certainly has enough dog in him to turn box defending into a fight. Yoro has been deployed at right-back in pre-season. He won’t spend the season there, but it has demonstrated just what a strong ball-carrier he can be. That is to be encouraged as part of United’s more sophisticated build-up.

Up front, there is no backup for Benjamin Šeško. Pre-season has made the point. He’s absent again, nursing a knock from last season. That leaves Cunha, or Bryan Mbeumo, or Rashford filling in. None of them is really a natural centre-forward; each of them does his best work elsewhere.

And the ground covering dueller is still nowhere to be seen. The pattern repeats across United’s spine: one good option in every important position and too few with a strong backup.

There is help coming from the youth setup, although how many players make it into the first-team squad this season is unclear.

Shea Lacey has started to look like the player he’d been promising to become before injuries took hold. If he stays with the first team, Lacey adds something different, though Amad and Mbeumo are obvious blockers to the first team.

Beyond Lacey, the Fletcher brothers are closest, though loans might suit each of them more than a handful of first-team games. Toby Collyer, Dan Gore, Jim Thwaites, Jacob Devaney, Chido Obi and Amass will be loaned or sold. The number of young players realistically expected to contribute this year is roughly one.

Which is fine. One genuine breakthrough a season is healthy enough. It’s just not enough quality or depth on which to build a successful campaign.

But United’s spine is stronger than it was in May. Santos and Tielemans add genuine quality, at least to United’s possession game. There are real questions about quality at the edges. Issues at full-back are unresolved. United are one more injury away from disaster at centre-back or in central midfield. There’s no real back-up for Šeško up front when Zirkzee is sold.

The issue is not that Carrick’s team is likely to slip back into mid-table again but that with more games on the horizon and rivals spending heavily, United have to run just to stand still. Does the club feel an urgent need to sprint?

Three weeks, then. Enough time for Wilcox, Berrada and Vivell to fix the fixable, or enough time to confirm they won’t. The squad is Carrick’s. The gaps in it are theirs.

What do you think. Make sense or nonsense? Let us know!

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