Manchester United fans' reaction to Joshua Zirkzee has been 10 years in the making

Let's start with the obvious: Joshua Zirkzee isn't really good enough for Manchester United.

He can be a neat and inventive footballer and takes up some interesting positions. He isn't an out-and-out centre-forward but can drop deep and link play. Plenty of teams could find a role for him, but he probably needs a team built to function around him rather than slotting in a system as tactically defined as Ruben Amorim's.

But none of that is his fault. There were plenty of shrewd judges who said in the summer that at £36.5million, he wasn't the answer for United. It should have been obvious to Erik ten Hag and Ineos' expensively assembled football department that a forward behind Wout Weghorst in the pecking order for the Netherlands wasn't going to be a long-term fixture at Old Trafford.

He has had his moments in a United shirt, none more so than scoring the winner on his debut, but mostly he has looked overpromoted. He was at the top of the shopping list when it came to forwards this summer because he had a reasonable release clause, and United are skint.

That kind of thinking has brought this football club to its knees. They signed a player who wasn't going to cut the mustard because they didn't have the budget they needed because of previous poor recruitment decisions. And on it goes, a vicious circle that now looks almost impossible to escape.

None of that is Zirkzee's fault. He has a languid style but is clearly trying. This is the chance of a lifetime for him, not that it looked that way when his number went up after 33 minutes against Newcastle.

Frustration had been bubbling away with a poor performance throughout a dire opening half-hour, but he had been no worse than Casemiro and Christian Eriksen, totally schooled in midfield by Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaraes. Ruben Amorim had to make a change, and Zirkzee was the fall guy.

He was standing on the opposite side of the pitch when his number appeared on the fourth official's board. Enough time for a sizeable round of sarcastic cheers to ripple around the ground, followed by booing. It may have been some of those fans were booing to voice their displeasure with the reaction, but either way, it was a brutal experience for the 23-year-old.

He reached the dugout, grabbed his coat and marched off down the touchline. There was some applause, followed by more booing when he reached the tunnel. He reappeared a few minutes later, humiliation complete on a night he will want to forget but might never be able to.

It certainly felt unfair to single Zirkzee out. United are in this dismal mess not because of a player they signed in the summer of 2024, but because of all those recruitment mistakes in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and so on. You get the idea.

This is where it has left them: Thankful Manchester City are beating Leicester City and disappointed Chelsea are losing to Ipswich Town. At the halfway stage, they are 14th in the Premier League and more likely to be dragged into a relegation battle than reach Europe.

The players aren't good enough, but the people running the club are the real problem. It hardly needs repeating the damage the Glazers have caused this football club, but Ineos are barely looking like an upgrade. A decade and more of negligence has left United staring into the abyss.

Now, they have a head coach who plays a distinctive style, but he barely has any players that suit his system, and United are penniless and have to sell to buy.

On the evidence of the last 10 years, this is a club that needs saving from itself in the transfer market. But unless Amorim is given the tools to play his 3-4-2-1 system, then all of this is a little pointless, for United, for these players, and for Amorim himself. Zirkzee isn't alone in not being up to the job.