Manchester United have a secret weapon in January transfer bid to solve goalscoring woes

Ruben Amorin certainly went out with a bang at Sporting CP. After it emerged he was to become the next head coach of Manchester United, the 39-year-old took charge of four more matches at his Portuguese club, all of which were won, and 16 goals were scored.

It's been an awful lot of fun at Sporting this season. That blitz was perhaps their most impressive run of the campaign, given it included a 4-1 win against Manchester City and a 4-2 comeback success at Braga, but they have won 16 and drawn two of their 18 games in all competitions, scoring at least twice in 17 of them.

Only PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands stopped Sporting from scoring multiple goals, and at times, the handbrake has well and truly come off, as it did in Amorim's whirlwind final days. Eight of those 16 goals in four games went to the unstoppable Victor Gyokeres.

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Amorim's next assignment is unlikely to deliver quite so much excitement. United have also played 18 games so far this season, and they have scored twice or more in a game on only seven occasions. One of those came against a League One side, two were at home against Leicester City, and another was at home against PAOK. This is a team that does not score particularly freely.

The challenge for Amorim is to remove the shackles. Having relied on a striker scoring goals for fun at Sporting, he has his work cut out to quickly get Rasmus Hojlund or Joshua Zirkzee to find the net at anything close to that level.

In the long term, Amorim might look to push for a reunion with 26-year-old Gyokeres. In the short-term, he is unlikely to find there