Football News: Manchester United Overview So Far This Season

Eight games into the league season now is a good time to reflect on where Manchester United are as a team in this rebuild. Obviously we are in reality one summer into a full squad rebuild that will likely take three summer transfer windows to complete.

There are obvious areas of this squad and team that need to be improved to give Ruben Amorim what he wants and he is having to adjust his tactics to this team while also not completely compromising on his philosophy and style of play.

For a start the best midfield we have is Casemiro / Bruno which is obviously not a long term option and is a compromise to what Amorim typically wants from his midfield. Far more passing and very little effective ball carrying. However, this isn't just a compromise due to a lack of ideal options available to him (Mainoo is actually an ideal profile for what Amorim typically wants, and he was a player Amorim was very excited to work with).

The other issue is Amorim's ideal system has the ball playing coming from the CB's, and bar Yoro none of our current options are really creative enough passers to give him that deeper ball playing he wants. So to balance that he needs more deeper ball playing from his midfielders, which in turn means they need to drop deeper more often that limits the teams ability to press quite as high.

We have seen at times our forwards have tried to press high, but then become too detached from the midfield that has dropped slightly deeper which leaves big gaps for the opposition to attack if they evade our press.

Amorim has adjusted by getting his team to press more in a mid block rather than a high press, this keeps us more compact in the middle. We have also seen more focus on our keeper playing longer balls out with an aim for us not to win the first ball but the second. Rather than trying to play out from the back.

The manager has made several key adjustments to his team, unfortunately the majority of fans have a fairly limited tactical understanding (due to very poor mainstream pundit analysis to be fair) . Because he hasn't changed formation many people don't see the tactical adaptations he has made.

Sticking to a regular team shape even when changing tactics can actually be a strength, especially when you are trying to teach players how to play a higher standard of technical and tactical football. Giving them too many complex instructions which might change several times during a game makes it much harder for them to consistently do the right thing.

League winning football is ultimately about consistency, both in terms of personnel and tactics if you want to get consistent results. If you look back at any league winning team and you look at the games they dropped points most of the time those games have seen either a few changes in the starting line up, or in the tactics played, often both.

If we want to get back to winning league titles then we need to be able to consistently play our game to a high level. You don't get to do that by totally changing how you play each week.

We've had the toughest run of fixtures of any side in the league, and yet we've actually got some really good results and had some good performances (along with a couple of poor ones) .

The new signings are all contributing well in my opinion. Lammens has come in and without doing any spectacular has really taken ahold of the keeper position and that is clearly giving the rest of the team more confidence. He will make some mistakes this season, every keeper does, even far more experienced keepers. But he has taken the No.1 spot and I don't see him losing it.

Mbeumo has been our best player, and while the first few games there was clearly some adjustments needed with him and Amad on the right. They are now starting to really click and understand each others game, and becoming a real strength of this side.

Cunha I think has had a really understated start. He's been a really influential figure in most games without getting the goals or assists to show for it. I thought he was probably our best player against Liverpool, he gave them so much trouble and opened up space and opportunities for the rest of the team.

Sesko for me has been a real joy to watch. He was the signing I was most skeptical about this summer. I wondered whether he was ready to step up, many forwards see a drop off when moving to the EPL from the Bundesliga. He is also younger and less experienced than I would have liked for our starting centre forward. He started slowly, clearly needing a little time to adapt to both the new league and his new team.

Yet he has been really good both on the off the ball. You can see he is (or will be) the complete centre forward, able to play off the shoulder or be a target man, has good striker instincts to be in the right place at the right time, a monster in the air, with a thunderous shot, while also having the intelligence and technical skills to link well with his teammates.

His flick to release Mbeumo leading to Sanchez getting red carded against Chelsea, his two goals showing true striker instincts. He's still young and he still has some growth and consistency to add to his game. But this kid will be an absolute monster for us, and I'm excited to watch him grow into that beast.

We've also seen improvement in many of our existing players. Casemiro has been in great form, Yoro continues to grow and impress, MdL has become our key defender, Mount has shown his quality giving the manager a real selection dilemma in the final third, and Maguire has flourished in the back three. While Bruno continues to be a key creator despite his deeper position.

Others have quietly been doing a really good job, Dorgu for example gets a lot of stick for not creating enough, yet he has created 6 chances this season, for context Amad has created 7, he created more chances this season than both Mount and Cunha who are having good seasons. Mazraoui and Shaw have also had solid seasons so far. Dalot is having an a mixed bag season, he's created 8 chances for teammates, but has also looked positionally poor when played at LWB. When played on the right he's been good.

If you are picking out players who've been poor this season they are typically either players who have had limited minutes (Mainoo, Heaven) or players who in truth don't have a long term future here (Zirkzee, Ugarte, Bayindir) .

Despite the media trying to create a storm of negativity we have actually made quite a few steps forward this season, and look like we will continue to do so. There will be further bumps in the road this season (I wouldn't be surprised if Brighton give us some trouble later for example) . Yet there are green shoots of progress that we should be happy about and give us hope for the future. I fully believe in this manager, he talks the talk, his tactical changes are subtle but effective, this team is growing and improving, this can be seen in both the underlying numbers and with the eye test.

This is all happening despite the fact that he still probably needs 3 or 4 new players for his ideal first team (two midfielders, a CB and a wingback), along with probably another 5 or 6 players for squad depth to be able to compete on multiple fronts. I genuinely believe that if we fully get behind this manager and back him, both us as fans and the club then he will get us back competing for major honours again within the next 2-3 seasons.

Written by Shappy October 25 2025 13:02:54