Amorim's left-field tactics backfire on worst day yet

As Manchester United prepared to finalise the departure of the only player to score 30 goals in a season for them since Sir Alex Ferguson retired, Ruben Amorim omitted the two strikers who cost the club a combined £110m, selected a midfielder in attack and saw them fail to score, and his team suffer another loss.

- RICHARD JOLLY

An afternoon that encapsulated much about the modern United – the waste of money and potential, the lack of logic, the underachievement, the increasingly dreadful returns at Old Trafford – was awful for Amorim. “The result is really bad,” he said. This was his worst day so far, despite stiff competition.

If the sacked Erik ten Hag was no stranger to odd selections, Amorim’s decision to field Kobbie Mainoo as his centre-forward ranked as his weirdest to date. While Mainoo hit the post in the first 10 minutes, an odd experiment soon became a failure.

Meanwhile, Crystal Palace showed the merits of a specialist striker as Jean-Philippe Mateta struck twice. “It is amazing when you have a No 9 who scores goals,” said manager Oliver Glasner. United lack one.

It is becoming almost passe to wonder if Marcus Rashford could have made a difference; the scorer of 138 United goals was not used, for a 13th successive match, as he closes in on a loan to Aston Villa. But if Amorim’s teamsheet was an indictment of the dropped Joshua Zirkzee and Rasmus Hojlund, the result was damning of a manager who suffered a fifth defeat in six home league games. For Palace, a fourth win in six visits to Old Trafford allowed them to leapfrog their hosts and their supporters to tell United they are “going down with Southampton”.