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Manchester United have been linked with yet another striker - but what do they really need this summer?
It’s story that’s picked up a steady amount of steam over the past week since it appeared in The Daily Express: Manchester United could try to solve their striker crisis not by signing some fancy new name from the continent, but by buying a player who’s a proven Premier League performer – Crystal Palace’s Jean-Philippe Mateta.
There’s a certain route one logic behind the story. Manchester United need a number nine who can score goals, but are operating under financial pressure caused by years of overspending by the Glazers, while Mateta would allegedly cost a relatively budget-friendly £40m. Throw in the fact that he can certainly score goals, and you have the makings of an intelligent move. So why would it make so little sense in reality?
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Why Jean-Philippe Mateta isn’t right for Manchester United
On the one hand, Mateta scores goals. 16 last season in the Premier League and a dozen more already since the start of the current campaign – and importantly, he’s outscored his expected goals over that time, a key indicator that his finishing is efficient and accurate and that his stats aren’t being inflated by the service provided by his team-mates.
Heaven knows that United need someone who can put the ball in the back of the net with that kind of efficacy. Rasmus Højlund and Joshua Zirkzee certainly haven’t demonstrated that capacity, and without it United will always be left treading water behind more competitive teams. They surely can’t fix everything that’s broken at the club in one summer, but signing a striker who will score 15-20 goals would make a lot of the problems that still exist more palatable.
Unfortunately, there’s more to life as a striker than simply being a goalscorer – or at least, there is with the way that Ruben Amorim plays. The Portuguese coach seems utterly and perhaps blithely determined to make his 3-4-2-1 system stick regardless of how poorly his players align with it, and signing players who fit the template this summer is the only way it will all work. Mateta doesn’t fit that bill.
At Sporting, the system worked in no small part because of Viktor Gyökeres. He didn’t play as a number nine, per se, but instead attacked the channels down the sides of the box, looking for ways to drag defenders out of position and create space for the pair of number tens to come in and cause chaos.
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The fact that Gyökeres has become a brilliant finisher helped, of course, but so did his speed, his pressing quality, his knack for finding half a yard off the ball and his passing skills. He was goalscorer and provider, a player who made room for himself and others around the box and who rarely lingered around the penalty spot waiting for crosses.
Mateta, on the other hand, is a more classical sort of striker. He rarely hits the channels and his heat maps show a man out of his comfort zone when he’s more than a few feet away from the penalty spot. He’s a poacher, a player you create chances for rather than making him a part of the broader attacking scheme.
In other words, Mateta is almost the complete opposite of Gyökeres. That doesn’t mean that he’s not an excellent striker – 28 goals in less than two seasons rather proves that he is – but that he will only be the right man for United as a whole if Amorim adapts his system. Given the way that he’s done things so far, that sounds unlikely.
What United really need instead of Mateta
What Manchester United need isn’t Mateta and in many ways isn’t a new striker at all. It’s a coherent, joined-up approach to recruitment which prioritises a unified strategic vision. It’s players that complement each other - and if Amorim stays on as their manager, Mateta isn’t one of them.
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Of course, it’s plausible that United don’t keep their new coach around, although Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s recent comments and the fact that they gave Erik ten Hag time to show proof of working suggests that Amorim will get the summer to set things up more to his liking.
If he does indeed stay, then what he needs is a forward who has pace, can press, and has the technical and tactical quality to create from half-spaces down the sides of the penalty area as well as to score goals himself. If they can’t get Gyökeres, then they may have a tough time finding their man.
Amorim’s requirements in many positions are deeply specific, more so than they perhaps are with simpler tactical schemes. That’s fine when you largely have the right players (as he did at Sporting, for the most part) but a problem when you’re coming into a club which was built for a different manager.
United need a Gyökeres proxy (or just the man himself). They need hyper-energetic defensive midfielders who can cover huge swathes of ground like Morten Hjulmand. They need attacking midfielders who are equally comfortable operating narrow and wide. They need what they don’t have.
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Which makes this summer deeply important. Get the recruitment right, and Amorim might just be able to pull off the direly-needed turnaround. Get it all wrong, as United have done so often in recent years, and he is probably doomed to failure, and the club will be all the way back to square one once more.
So perhaps what United really need isn’t just a striker, or a more joined-up approach to transfers, but to work out whether it’s worth sticking with Amorim for years to come before they spend a penny this summer – because if he is, you need to pull the squad apart for scrap. Doing that and that sacking him six months later would be just about the most dangerous thing the club could do. Let’s see if they can avoid doing just that…
Related topics:Ruben AmorimCrystal Palace
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