Seven minutes into Manchester United’s 1-0 win at Wolves, Paul Pogba found Bruno Fernandes with a diagonal ball and the Portuguese midfielder ran at the defence. Jadon Sancho called for a pass to his right, while Mason Greenwood peeled off to the left, attracting defenders with him.
Bruno took advantage of the space left by the retreating defence to hit a 25-yard shot that skidded wide of the far post.
Sancho’s gesture – “seriously?” – signalled mild irritation that Bruno had not passed. The United fans in the stands hardly seemed to notice, as they were joyously cavorting with a life-size cardboard cutout of Cristiano Ronaldo. The imminent return of the king was a bigger deal than anything that could be happening out on that pitch.
Signing a 36-year-old Ronaldo and making him the best-paid player in the league opens United up to accusations of being like one of those MLB franchises that built a corny retro ballpark to delight their ageing boomer fanbase.
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Their pride in the record-breaking engagement numbers generated by the social media posts announcing Ronaldo’s arrival underlines that this is about fan service, not team building.
Clearly it’s exciting for fans when their club signs one of the greatest players in history, even if he is 36 and past his best. It’s hard to imagine the United fan who would begrudge Ronaldo £25 million a year if that’s what it takes to keep him out of the claws of Manchester City.
It would be foolish to assume United’s attacking players are all quite as overjoyed with Ronaldo’s arrival. Whatever they previously thought about where they stood in the team hierarchy, they all just got demoted one spot.
It’s not about ego, jealousy or malice – there doesn’t need to be some Cassius in the United dressing room, bitching that Ronaldo doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about.
It’s enough that United’s team must now assume a new form dictated by the massive gravitational field of the star that has suddenly appeared in its midst.
Until now, the senior man in the United attack has been Bruno Fernandes, who played his part along with Alex Ferguson, Rio Ferdinand and Patrice Evra in Operation Persuade Ronaldo. (It’s not like he had much choice.)
Experience is the best teacher, and Greenwood would learn more by playing matches than by sitting on the bench watching Ronaldo play them
Fernandes has produced phenomenal numbers since joining United, with 69 goals and assists in 82 appearances. His productivity is related to the privileged position he has earned in the team structure.
Fernandes is licensed to gamble – to risk losing the ball every time he gets it, to take a shot, try a killer pass – because he is the acknowledged creative leader in the attack. That’s why he felt entitled to try that low-percentage shot from long distance while Sancho yelled for the pass.
Being downgraded
It’s easy to ignore a shout from Jadon Sancho, a player so easygoing that he committed a total of one foul in 26 Bundesliga matches last season. Ignore Ronaldo too many times, and you’ll be looking for a new club.
We saw what happened to Diogo Jota in the Euros against Hungary when he ignored an unmarked Ronaldo and took the shot himself. Nobody can take much of that kind of heat.
Fernandes’s job used to be to get the ball and make something happen. Now he has to consider whether Ronaldo might be better placed. Maybe he will be able to persuade Ronaldo to let him keep taking the penalties and free kicks. If not, his numbers are about to fall off a cliff. Will he embrace being downgraded from magic man to water carrier?
Fernandes at least can be confident he will, for now, keep his place in the team. Others are less fortunate.
If Ronaldo plays at centre-forward, the obvious fall guy is Edinson Cavani, who emerged as a hero in the second half of last season, but who has recently clashed with United over the question of whether he will be allowed to play for Uruguay in forthcoming internationals.
United paid €85m for Sancho so he has a good chance of playing on one of the wings. That leaves Mason Greenwood, Marcus Rashford, Paul Pogba, Anthony Martial, Daniel James, Jesse Lingard, Juan Mata and Cavani to fight it out for the last remaining place in the front three.
Solskjaer has tended to play Pogba on the left in games where he feels he needs two defensive-minded midfielders behind Fernandes in the middle.
The thought of leaving so many brilliant forwards on the bench will make him reluctant to persist with that idea; the pressure will be to make room for another attacker by moving Pogba back into central midfield.
Can you use Pogba in central midfield if you have Ronaldo up front? What happens when you lose the ball? Winning it back is not a strength of Pogba’s, and Ronaldo is in the bottom one per cent of forwards in the top five European leagues when it comes to pressing actions per game, according to fbref.com. (Cavani, even at 34, is in the top third).
It remains to be seen how Ronaldo reacts the first time he is felled by a defender's forearm to the brainstem, only for the referee to impatiently wave play on
Pogba played in the middle against Wolves, and Solskjaer cannot have enjoyed the sight of counterattackers streaking through the wide open spaces of his midfield.
And what will Ronaldo’s arrival mean for Mason Greenwood, who scored another winner yesterday with a typically incisive run and shot? Robbie Keane expressed a widely held view on the Sky analysis: “He can only learn off one of the best players in the world”. But experience is the best teacher, and Greenwood would learn more by playing matches than by sitting on the bench watching Ronaldo play them.
Old greats
The idea of the old greats mentoring the new resonates at United, where they fondly remember how the Fergie fledglings stayed back after training to do extra work with Eric Cantona. In Ronaldo’s first spell at Old Trafford, he also had the chance to play with and learn from an established world-class forward. But his relationship with Ruud van Nistelrooy was dysfunctional, and Alex Ferguson eventually decided that he had to get van Nistelrooy out of Ronaldo’s way to give the younger player space to develop.
All this presupposes that Ronaldo will be fit enough to play a lot of games. Phenomenal athlete though he is, the common-sense, let-it-flow Premier League is an unforgiving environment for a 36-year-old who has spent the last 12 years in Spain and Italy. It remains to be seen how Ronaldo reacts the first time he is felled by a defender’s forearm to the brainstem, only for the referee to impatiently wave play on.
This kind of consideration may explain why United didn’t seem interested in bringing him home until it suddenly looked like he was about to join Man City.
Any such doubts have yielded to the irresistible logic of eyeballs, that says when you get the chance to sign the most famous player in the world, of course you sign him; he guarantees that the world will be watching.
And yet, as Solskjaer likes to say, this is Man United. We’d have been watching anyway.
