Which Manchester United players have been letting the Red Devils down the most over the past year?
CM Mason Mount
Manchester United spent 55 million pounds in the summer 2023 transfer window in order to sign Mason Mount from Chelsea, and the former 2020/21 Champions League winner has looked nothing like the top Premier League attacking midfielder he was a few years ago.
If anything, signing Mount didn’t make much sense in the first place, because Manchester United already had an even more statistically prolific No. 10 in Portuguese playmaker Bruno Fernandes, who was never going to yield his starting job anyway.
And then behind him, Manchester United have one of the top prospects in the Premier League, Alejandro Garnacho, meaning Mount was destined – or doomed, depending on your perspective, to be a No. 8.
It’s hard to fully criticize Mount for his performances at Manchester United, mostly because he barely plays due to a constant barrage of nagging injuries. In any case, the injuries don’t absolve Mount of criticism but rather, ahem, mount more criticism because they make it impossible for him to match the 55 million pound investment.
Mount went from 11 goals and 10 assists at Chelsea in the 2021/22 Premier League season to one goal and no assists in seven starts and ten bench appearances over the past two seasons at Manchester United.
RW Antony
What spares Mason Mount from being called the biggest Manchester United transfer flop of the last five years is the fact that Antony has been an even bigger disaster in the Red Devils’ attack.
The Antony spin has become a meme of a so-called skill move that encapsulates the frustrating futility of any attack led by the Brazilian right winger, whose continued struggles make Erik ten Hag’s management of Jadon Sancho that much more mind-numbing to fans around European football.
Antony cost Manchester United 95 million euros when Ajax had no leverage to sell him that high, given nobody else in Europe had any interest in spending even half that amount on a player with questionable end product.
Through two full seasons at United, Antony has scored just 5 goals and 3 assists in the Premier League, and now ten Hag, his biggest backer, has zero interest in even giving Antony a single start in the 2024/25 season.
CB Harry Maguire
If anything, Harry Maguire is the most thankful for the Antony transfer, because now there is someone to take the heat off the former Leicester City defender as the worst Manchester United transfer in recent memory.
Even at the time, nobody could comprehend why Manchester United splurged 80 million pounds on a slow center back with limited defensive quality compared to his peers.
Spending that much on a defender is bound to backfire, and all Maguire has done is prove fans around England who doubted the signing correct. However, despite Maguire’s inability to meet the price tag, he was an important player to Manchester United at one point.
Now, Maguire is a backup who needs to stay as a backup, because whenever Manchester United are forced to start him, his error-prone ways and physical limitations harm the squad, especially against top opponents.
LW Marcus Rashford
No single Manchester United player is as disappointing as Marcus Rashford, because he really should be the team’s superstar player and a Premier League Player of the Season-caliber player at this point in his career.
Rashford matched a career high with 17 goals in the 2022/23 season – his first under Erik ten Hag – and it looked like the left winger was turning a new leaf at Old Trafford.
Instead, Rashford regressed with Manchester United in 2023/24, standing out as the most disappointing player on an eighth-placed team. He’s been even worse in the Premier League in the 2024/25 season despite actually scoring regularly in cup competitions.
Rashford has great technical ability and isn’t lacking in intelligence or physical tools. But he has neither the consistency nor the confidence to fulfill his potential at Manchester United.
INEOS rubbished any transfer rumors surrounding the former England international, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the 26-year-old’s best chance at fulfilling his potential will be outside the Premier League.
DM Casemiro
Casemiro joined Manchester United from Real Madrid with a lot of hype, having won his fourth career Champions League title with the Merengue club in the previous season as the best No. 6 in world football.
Real Madrid, as with Raphael Varane, sold Casemiro at the right time, replacing the former best No. 6 in the world with likely the future best No. 6 in the world, Aurelien Tchouameni.
Initially, Casemiro made a fair case against the doubters of his signing who wondered if the Brazilian captain could ever live up to the 70 million pound investment on account of already being older than 30 at the time of the transfer.
He was elite defensively, better on the ball than Real Madrid fans said, and, most importantly, became the clear leader of the Manchester United starting lineup as he elevated the Red Devils to Champions League qualification.
But Father Time caught up to Casemiro quite abruptly, as the 32-year-old’s play dropped precipitously in the 2023/24 season. Casemiro was legitimately one of the worst midfielders in English football last season.
He looked so slow in transition and somehow made even more passing errors. Worse yet, Casemiro’s defensive blunders increased exponentially, and he made several head-scratching positional mistakes that proved costly to Manchester United.
The Red Devils were unable to sell Casemiro to Saudi Arabia, but nothing less than an Al-Nassr transfer to reunite with Cristiano Ronaldo would make do for a legendary defensive midfielder who has met an unfortunate decline at the top level of European football in 2024.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.