It’s never a good sign when a teenager looks like your most mature player. But that is the nature of things at Manchester United at the moment.
And while Rio Ferdinand can hardly be more glowing about his praise for a player who only made his senior debut in the Premier League just before Christmas, he does have some rather nagging concerns about what sort of an effect Erik ten Hag’s system – the Red Devils playing something more akin to basketball these days while leaving wide open spaces for opposition forwards to gallop into – will have on Kobbie Mainoo’s development.
It was a very familiar tale during Saturday’s horrible 1-1 draw at Brentford.
Time and time again, Mainoo was left chasing shadows through no fault of his own, Manchester United’s forwards pressing high, their defence sitting deep, and those in midfield asked to embark on lung-busting runs from on end of the pitch to the other.
There is asking your midfielders to play ‘box to box’, and then there’s this.
Manchester United legend shares Kobbie Mainoo fears
“You look at Kobbie Mainoo. Everyone is raving about him and rightly so. He has been magnificent since he’s come into the team,” Ferdinand tells The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast, speaking to former United team-mates Gary Neville and Roy Keane.
“But I don’t see anyone trying to protect him. He is a kid! Imagine a kid coming into one of our teams, (you) try and protect that kid.
“There may be one, like (Wayne) Rooney, that you don’t need to protect. But, in the main, you make sure there’s bodies around him, and don’t let him be exposed.”
With Christian Eriksen and Casemiro lacking the required energy levels, and with Sofyan Amrabat more comfortable in Morocco’s low-block, the task has often fallen on Mainoo to be not only the man who makes United tick in possession but also their premiere ball-winner out of it.
Ferdinand understandably fears that such an approach will do little to aid the progress of player who, lest we forget, is still only 18 and has just 16 league appearances under his belt. The prospect of Mainoo suffering from burnout, and perhaps the sort of muscle injury which has claimed so many of his team-mates, feels like a very real concern.
Chelsea host Man United at Stamford Bridge tonight
“How many games do you see him get left exposed?,” adds Ferdinand, a member of Sir Alex Ferguson’s 2008 Champions League-winning squad. “For a young kid, it’s a lonely place in there, with the big spaces.
“So those are things where it’s got to be elder players, leaders in that team, coaches who say; ‘listen, make sure you tighten it up in that area’.”
Ten Hag, much to the frustration of many supporters, appears reluctant to adapt a system which has proven to be more than a hindrance than a help during a poor second season at the helm, and could yet cost him his job under Ineos.
United can, however, cut the gap to Tottenham and Aston Villa in the Champions League race with a win at Stamford Bridge tonight. Spurs and Villa dropped points in midweek, the former drawing with West Ham and the latter hammered by a Phil Foden-inspired Manchester City at the Etihad.