Maguire up front, goals drying up, and records tumbling Manchester United’s chaotic season hits a new low under Ruben Amorim.
Sometimes when a boat is sinking, the crew resorts to desperate measures. And at the City Ground, with Manchester United staring at a 13th Premier League defeat of the season, Ruben Amorim’s response was to send on a centre-back as a striker.
Trailing 1-0 to Nottingham Forest and in urgent need of a goal, Amorim had already replaced the underwhelming Joshua Zirkzee who has just three league goals since his £36.5 million summer arrival with Rasmus Hojlund, the £72 million Dane who has notched 13 goals this campaign.
But when that move failed to spark a revival, it was Harry Maguire who became United’s last roll of the dice.
In a bizarre but strangely fitting end to another frustrating performance, it was Maguire who almost salvaged a point.
The 32-year-old’s scrappy effort deep into stoppage time beat goalkeeper Matz Sels but was cleared off the line by Forest’s Murillo, summing up United’s night and season.
“We tried with good opportunities, but in the last third, the last pass, the last assist wasn’t there. Then if we don’t have that we cannot score goals,” Amorim reflected after the match.
Maguire managed United’s only shot on target after the break. Zirkzee had none in 78 minutes. Hojlund? Also none. The statistics show a lack of cutting edge is no longer a blip it is a full-blown identity crisis.
“This season is like that. We had a lot of shots on goal, we pushed the opponent to the last third, but in the last third we had a lack of quality,” Amorim added, bluntly assessing the problem.
United have scored just 37 goals in 30 league matches only a fraction more than one per game. They are on pace to finish below their worst-ever Premier League scoring total of 49, set in the 2015-16 season.
But scoring is not the only issue as defensively the Red Devils are hardly watertight either, having conceded 41 goals already.
“We know the characters of the [Forest] team and one goal can put them in one situation that they love. We have to score two goals to win a match and that is frustrating as it was the beginning of the game. We helped them to win three points,” Amorim continued.
The current league position 13th is staggering and should it hold, it would be United’s worst Premier League finish.
Their previous low, eighth place under Erik ten Hag last season, now feels almost like a golden era by comparison.
Their 37 points from 30 games (1.23 points per game) puts them well behind even the dismal 2021-22 season under Solskjaer and Rangnick, when they earned 58 points in total.
