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