January may not be Toon’s answer
And how match sharp is he given his total lack of minutes on the park since last season?
Atsu and Muto I don’t even want to consider as starters.
Who does that leave us with? Well Maximin deserves a place because he’s exciting, he’s bubbly when others aren’t, and he possesses natural skills. However, he doesn’t get his head up in the final third and doesn’t look a natural finisher.
Nevertheless Maximin has currently to be first on the team sheet up front, and Gayle, despite his chronic lack of match practice and inability to last 90 minutes, must surely be worth a gamble because he might just score where we know others don’t. That would leave one position to fill from
Joelinton, Almiron and Carroll.
Any thought of Carroll and Gayle starting together right now is surely stretching optimism beyond belief simply because they haven’t played enough.
Carroll has by far the greater history of injuries and therefore is a greater physical risk which would relegate him to the subs’ bench if it was up to me and leave Joelinton to begin the game from his last chance saloon.
However, I want to see Joelinton get into the penalty area more and I want Gayle to get much closer to him than others have done.
As for midfield, I believe Bruce will almost certainly go with Isaac Hayden – which underlines how far Jonjo Shelvey has gone back since he was being touted for the World Cup as a Newcastle player.
He’s got the best vision of all the midfielders but off the ball Shelvey is a liability. Ki has an extra problem – an alarming indifference in his play.
The truth is United haven’t got a genuine top quality PL player to operate up front or alongside Matty Longstaff.
We are making do with the front three while staggering towards the escape valve of the January transfer market and incredibly doing so in the knowledge that Almiron, Joelinton and Maximin have all been bought during 2019 at a total cost of £77m. So what, I ask, suggests United will get it right if they plunge again come the turn of the year?