Club have spent north of £200m to rebuild an attack that scored only 44 goals last season, but have they done enough to fix the problems?
Manchester United finished 15th in the league last season, their worst since 1974 and they were relegated that year. After such a poor campaign, surely the only way is up?
The manager
If Ruben Amorim’s nine lives did not end with the final kick of the ball last season, he could reasonably be expected to have very few of them left.
Make or break season for the United manager? It has to be. He and the club have shown some keen insight as they embarked on a summer rebuild. But they have still only changed the attacking players and it feels like the squad’s problems run deeper than that.
But it doesn’t matter, because once the transfer window shuts Amorim will be expected to deliver with the group of players he has. Can he do that?
The squad
Amorim has repeatedly emphasised he wants to change the culture in the dressing room, including getting players to form closer relationships with each other, the point being that better relationships off the pitch help with connections on it.
During the club’s Stateside pre-season tour, a lot of emphasis was placed on forging these connections and essentially making sure the dressing room is a healthy environment for everyone. The preference was for players to hang out together as one group, rather than break off into small units that don’t interact as much with the others.
A new leadership group has also been appointed, with captain Bruno Fernandes joined by Lisandro Martinez, Harry Maguire, Diogo Dalot, Tom Heaton and Noussair Mazraoui as squad leaders who would address some of the minority issues among the team and help everybody else get along and be heard when necessary.
Feeling of fresh start
This summer the club unveiled a newly refurbished £50m Carrington training centre. Decaying infrastructure had been highlighted as a symptom of a Glazer-induced ailment that had crippled the squad for so long.
Last year when Ineos took over the footballing side of the club, Sir Jim Ratcliffe earmarked part of his $300m investment for the development of United’s training facilities. Returning from pre-season in the States and then moving back into a completely new home feels like something new that the squad can leverage to forge a new identity, perspective and self-belief. United need it.
New signings
United have spent north of £200m to rebuild an attack that scored only 44 goals last season, the lowest of any side that wasn’t relegated, barring Everton.
Marcus Rashford, Antony, Jadon Sancho and Alejandro Garnacho – each of whose stay at United has proved problematic one way or another and they were consequently frozen out of the squad this summer – are all attackers. Rasmus Hojlund has struggled and it looks like the club believe it would be best for him to start afresh elsewhere.
In their place, the club have brought in Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko. The first two have experience in the Premier League and Sesko is an exciting young talent who was on the radar of other English clubs, Newcastle and Arsenal for example.
It feels like something that has to work or else be tagged a system rather than personnel issue. Cue United’s midfield. While the club have lavished on their front line, the middle is still fragile and porous.
They know they need to fix this and are in the market for a central midfielder. Whether or not they’ll sign one is unclear. It feels like any negatives this season are odds-on to come from this area of the pitch.
Big season for…
Amorim. But if it’s to be limited to players, you get the feeling that nearly everyone in this United team has something to prove, barring the captain perhaps.
United players were accused of lacking intensity and fight last season as the side dropped to a tragically low position in the table. Can they prove that they deserve to play for an outfit that has fielded some of the best players of all time?
Season prediction
5th
