Kobbie Mainoo has arrived
Who needs Declan Rice when you've got this gifted teenager?
COMMENT Pre-season friendly: United 2, Arsenal 0
The last time United beat Arsenal 2-0 in a competitive match was in an FA Cup quarter-final 12 years ago. Alex Ferguson picked a team that made you wonder if a friend had bet him a racehorse that he couldn’t keep a clean sheet. Seven of the ten outfield players were defenders – and yet somehow it worked, with one of them, Fabio, scoring the first goal and Wayne Rooney adding the second.
Yesterday, in front of 82,000 people at the home of the New York Giants, United gave Arsenal another 2-0 drubbing (and then beat them on penalties to boot). The result is heartwarming but as this was a pre-season friendly, albeit a spicy one at times, we can’t read much into it. Still, United have some modest momentum with three wins and no goals against, and there do seem to be two clear conclusions to be drawn. First, Arsenal’s new away shirt is a shocker – not that United can talk. Secondly, Kobbie Mainoo has arrived.
Last season Mainoo got a few minutes here and there as a No 8 and showed some neat touches, but the most striking thing about him was the fact that he was only 17. Now he’s 18 and a different proposition. He’s been playing as a No 6, preferred to Scott McTominay, and you can see why.
He’s getting sturdier, so he can shake off opponents who might have shunted him off the ball a year ago. He’s taking charge of situations, dropping in to the right-back zone to help the defence play out from the back. This was a mixed blessing last night as it freed Aaron Wan-Bissaka to drift into inside-right, where you could see him wondering what on earth to do when he got the ball. But it could be just the thing for Diogo Dalot, who is more of a frustrated forward.
Mainoo’s passing has been so crisp and decisive that some of his older team-mates have been left looking like novices (Antony has started his second season as if determined to learn nothing from his first). And his use of space is promising too. He has been making bold moves, like the one that led to United’s first goal. He saw a gap on the right wing, where Tom Heaton found him with the sort of guided missile that David de Gea seldom attempted. Mainoo shrugged off a challenge and slipped a simple pass inside to Bruno Fernandes, who took a few touches, weighed up the options, thought he might as well have a crack with his left foot, and so surprised Aaron Ramsdale that the ball ended up bobbling into the far corner.
If you were a local, not necessarily on top of the latest Premier League transfers, and you’d been told that there was one English holding midfielder out there who had cost £100m, you might have assumed it was Mainoo rather than Declan Rice. No doubt Rice will come good soon, but Mainoo is coming good right now.
He can be inked in as Casemiro’s understudy, which means United can afford to sell both of McFred. And now we see why Erik ten Hag was prepared to let Zidane Iqbal and Charlie Savage go. Although it’s a shame when a long apprenticeship ends in a modest sale, it’s surely good for those young men to go and play. And it’s better for the chosen few who stay – Alejandro Garnacho last year, Mainoo now, maybe Alvaro Fernandez next – to be thrown in towards the deep end. So far, the plan is going swimmingly.
Tim de Lisle is the editor of United Writing and a sportswriter for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing. If you received this piece by email, please feel free to forward it to the nearest Red.