On The Ball | Manchester United must go all out to secure the most important piece of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s puzzle
- Manchester United are desperately short of firepower up top and the club needs to make the biggest signing of the post-Ferguson era to return to the top
- Edinson Cavani has done a job and it’s crop of promising youngsters might one day be the answer, but a shorter-term solution is needed
Manchester United boast fast, exciting and young forwards, yet don’t have an established centre forward, a top goalscorer. Edinson Cavani could have been that man this season, but he’s started only seven of United’s 28 league games and played only 919 minutes of league football. Harry Maguire has played 2,610. Cavani signed after the season had begun, quarantined, got fit, got injured, got suspended and got injured again. Twice. The Uruguayan could still be a world class player and has shown moments in games scoring a creditable six league goals and has been a positive influence on the training ground. But let’s not kid ourselves that he’s been as successful as United fans hoped he would be. The timing of his move couldn’t have been worse. He left Paris for Manchester at the start of winter and moved into a city where he didn’t speak the language, one under lockdown because of the pandemic. Then he was suspended for a tweet perceived to be racist when it wasn’t. His “Manchester” chapter will make for interesting reading if he ever does an autobiography.
Anthony Martial is in no danger of troubling the clauses in his contracts for golden boots and player of the year awards.
Beloved by the Glazers who own the club on paper, the Parisian has scored four league goals and made five assists. It’s not close to even being sufficient.
Marcus Rashford has nine league goals from 28 games and is the twelfth top scorer in the league. He’s not the go to man for penalties either. He’d like to be, but that’s Bruno Fernandes territory. The Portuguese is by a distance the top scorer with 16 league goals. Only Harry Kane and Mo Salah have more – one more – and Bruno has a better shot accuracy and conversion rate than both, but while he used to be a central defender, he’s never been a centre forward. Bruno needs more goals around him.
Paul Pogba, top scorer two years ago, has been injured too much to be the same this season. Pogba is not looking to get out of United.
