Manchester United’s blind spot – they have not had a top No 6 for 20 years

Michael Carrick is among those tasked with solving Manchester United’s midfield deficiencies - Peter Powell/Reuters

Manchester United’s vision specialist was blown away. She would put four shapes on a ledge and ask the player to detail which one was furthest forward. And every time he got it right. Even when she altered the positions, it did not matter. The answers were always correct.

Prof Gail Stephenson, who died in 2015, never forgot the midfielder with acute spatial awareness that she had first encountered at Old Trafford many years before, or those sessions with him.

“Your peripheral vision – and perception of depth – are amazing,” Stephenson would tell him.

It is 20 years since that player signed for United and the irony is that he is now part of the team tasked with finally addressing what has effectively become a two-decade-long blind spot for English football’s biggest club.

Time will tell whether Michael Carrick remains as head coach beyond the end of the season. But he is actively involved in recruiting the kind of all-seeing central midfielder that has coincidentally – and bafflingly – eluded the club since he arrived in Manchester as Roy Keane’s replacement back in 2006.

The narrative that United’s problems started after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013 do not apply in the case of the club’s perennial midfield troubles, which began under the Scot and have only mushroomed since.

Ferguson did sign Owen Hargreaves and Anderson in the summer after he signed Carrick, but injuries undermined the former while the latter never quite lived up to expectations.

Since then, it has been a sorry story of square pegs in round holes, misguided purchases, botched pursuits, incoherent planning and a curious tendency to look to experienced but ageing stars well past their prime.

Only United would, for example, go from targeting Cesc Fabregas to signing a diametrically opposed midfielder in Marouane Fellaini in the same summer. Or court Frenkie de Jong only to end up with a completely different profile of player in Casemiro, as happened in 2022.

Club eyes summer midfield overhaul

United’s current recruitment hierarchy – led by Jason Wilcox and Christopher Vivell with Carrick and others feeding in – at least seem to recognise that central midfield is the club’s oldest problem and will handicap progress until it is fixed.

If last summer was about revitalising an attack that had scored the fifth-fewest goals in the Premier League the previous season – leading to a £207m investment in Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Benjamin Sesko – the priority this summer is to overhaul the midfield.

Casemiro will leave when his contract expires at the end of the season and Manuel Ugarte, who has fallen well short of the standards required, wants regular game time. Uncertainty also surrounds the future of captain and talisman Bruno Fernandes, who turns 32 at the end of a summer in which he will enter the final 12 months of his contract. Beyond Kobbie Mainoo, it is slim pickings.

As a minimum United will need two midfield recruits, particularly as Champions League football will start to feel even more probable should they beat Leeds United on Monday night.

Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson is greatly admired but costly and Manchester City would appear to be the early frontrunners for the England midfielder. Sandro Tonali at Newcastle United has his admirers and Adam Wharton, of Crystal Palace, is a dynamic, line-breaking passer and probably the cheapest option.

Adam Wharton, the Crystal Palace midfielder, has been linked with a move to Manchester United - Adam Davy/PA

Beyond that trio, United have previously enquired about Brighton’s Carlos Baleba through third parties, Joao Gomes is expected to leave Wolves and Mateus Fernandes is earning a burgeoning reputation and may see his price fall should West Ham get relegated. All have Premier League experience, although several midfielders in Spain are also thought to be on United’s radar.

Control of football matches, particularly when leading or trying to wrestle back an advantage after a setback, is an issue that has plagued United for longer than many fans care to remember. And control remains a hallmark of the best sides.

It is no coincidence that, with the exception of Leicester in 2015-16, the Premier League champions across the past 10 seasons ranked extremely well for possession, pass accuracy, lowest percentage of long passes, build-up attacks, build-up goals and sequences featuring at least 10 open-play passes.

Yet calming a game has often felt alien to an erratic, chaotic United, who have been accustomed to conceding quickly in bursts. Still, this is representative of a midfield that has so often felt like an afterthought.

Only eight of United’s past 50 permanent signings over the past 10 years have been midfielders in the truest sense. Three of those (Casemiro, Christian Eriksen and Nemanja Matic) were long past their best and, in an increasingly competitive Premier League, unable to mask other weaknesses in a way Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs managed to in a Robin van Persie-inspired United in Ferguson’s final season in 2012-13.

United have failed to match rivals’ world-class recruits

Plasters were never going to be enough in recent years, even less so when the best managers at the most successful clubs over the same period have placed such a premium on midfielders.

United supporters have watched windows come and go in which rivals signed prime No 6s and No 8s, or hybrids of the two, who would go on to become the bedrock of their sides while their own club routinely floundered. Worse still, they never seemed to learn from those past failures.

United’s grand plan in the summer of 2015, when Chelsea and Manchester City bought the game-changers N’Golo Kante and Kevin De Bruyne respectively, was to sign Morgan Schneiderlin, who was wholly out of his depth, and a crocked 30-year-old Bastian Schweinsteiger.

In the periods Fabinho arrived at Liverpool and Rodri pitched up at City – two players at the heart of Premier League and Champions League successes – United landed on Fred and Donny van de Beek.

There has been some misfortune. Paul Pogba was considered a good signing by many, even at a club-record £89m, but never lived up to the expectations supporters had for him. Most of the time, however, United have just been their own worst enemy in the transfer market. Take 2023, a year when Chelsea signed Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez, Liverpool acquired Alexis MacAllister and Ryan Gravenberch and Declan Rice went to Arsenal.

United’s big idea was to buy Mason Mount, a player who had done his best work at Chelsea as a right-sided forward, with the aim of turning him into a No 8 and then spent the subsequent season asking an ageing Casemiro to cover wide-open spaces in an exposed midfield.

Ugarte arrived 12 months later to plug those holes but has never looked good enough, and certainly not in possession. So this summer is a big one. No more midfield blind spot.

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