Manchester United are facing the greatest crisis in the Premier League club’s history. Their worst start to a league season in 40 years was extended with a 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth on Sunday. It threw not only the manager’s future into doubt, but every member of the ownership, senior management and playing squad as a whole.
United fans do not turn on their managers or players. That changed on Sunday when fans cheered off Michael Carrick and then booed off the players. The message is clear: United fans are not prepared to take any more – and that goes from the top to the bottom of the first-team set-up and those who recruited them.
Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at the problems plaguing the club: Since Cristiano Ronaldo left United in November 2022 after his second stint at Old Trafford, the side has struggled for a regular goalscorer. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was a short-term fix before Ronaldo’s return, while Romelu Lukaku was unable to turn a reputation into returns. Danish striker Rasmus Hojlund was recruited as United’s answer to Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, but a lack of goals saw the youngster shipped back to Italy.
Enter the big-money arrival of Serbian international Benjamin Sesko in the summer of 2025. The 23-year-old has impressed in patches, but injuries have also taken their toll, and his absence in United’s woeful start to the season has been glaring. United have tried Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo as strikers, but both are naturally wide players who thrive on running at defenders.
Then came the false nine, with Bruno Fernandes handed a role perfected by Lionel Messi at Barcelona. Too often in Fernandes’s case, however, the Portuguese playmaker found himself with his back to goal and unable to pull the strings of the runners around him. Having won the Professional Footballers’ Association’s Player of the Year award on the back of breaking the Premier League record for the number of assists in a season, the role took his greatest ability away from him.
Eight players sit above United’s leading scorer – Mbeumo, with four goals – in the Premier League’s scoring chart this season; all of them would walk into the United side. The Glazer family bought into Manchester United in 2005, long before Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013. However, it is now believed that English football’s most successful manager and then-CEO David Gill were masking the problems brought by the US family’s ownership.
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