Garnacho, Mainoo and Hojlund: Managing the burden on Man United’s brightest talents

It was only right that on the day Manchester United ended a mostly miserable season on a positive note, their match-winners should be two academy graduates who have brightened up the gloom throughout.

Even before Saturday’s victory in the FA Cup final, Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo were at the centre of one of the most memorable images of United’s season.

The sight of Garnacho, Mainoo and Rasmus Hojlund sitting together on an advertising hoarding, celebrating Manchester United’s second in a 3-0 win over West Ham United in February with arms around each other’s shoulders, was described as a window into the club’s future.

Yet it was also a vision of its present. Those three players — then 18, 19 and 20 years old — ended the Premier League season among the top eight in United’s squad for minutes played.

In all competitions, Garnacho and Hojlund broke the 3,000-minute barrier. Only Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot had more time on the pitch among outfield players at United.

In Hojlund’s case, that is despite him missing nine games through injury. In Garnacho’s, it is despite him needing to wait to earn Erik ten Hag’s trust in the early part of the campaign. Having only started three games up until November, he has since started the last 38 consecutively.

Mainoo lags slightly behind the other two, largely due to the ankle injury that sidelined him for the first three months of the campaign. If not for that, his rise to becoming a first-team regular would have come far sooner.

The future is now, but it has also had to be. While Ten Hag deserves credit for Garnacho and Mainoo’s integration in particular, the United manager would also accept that the squad’s younger players have been relied upon out of necessity and used more than anticipated due to an unrelenting injury crisis.

Hojlund has had no natural backup since Anthony Martial’s final United appearance on December 9. Only the recent adoption of a false-nine system has allowed for the 20-year-old to be rotated. Before that, Hojlund had one goal in 10 appearances. He scored two in two off the bench to end the league season.

Mainoo’s first start came during Casemiro’s spell out with a hamstring issue in November. And even when fit, Ten Hag’s other midfield options lack the same composure and ability to receive under pressure in the build-up.

Garnacho’s minutes have come more as a result of the poor form of Antony, who has largely stayed fit but has been unable to dislodge the teenager on merit, but his consistent availability has also helped.

Garnacho is one of only three teenagers to play more than 2,500 outfield minutes across Europe’s five major leagues, alongside Valencia’s Cristhian Mosquera and Lille’s Leny Yoro.

As young players, Garnacho, Mainoo and Hojlund’s abilities also need to be protected and preserved, and United’s reliance on them this season has not gone unnoticed among staff at Carrington.

Jason Wilcox, INEOS’s new technical director, has pointed to the high number of minutes that the younger members of the squad have played this season during internal conversations. Ten Hag is already aware and has sought to ease the burden on the trio when possible.

That has also proved difficult at times, however, given the hope and optimism they have come to represent.

Take the 2-1 defeat away to Nottingham Forest in December for example. Over a busy Christmas period, Mainoo had made his first set of consecutive senior starts against Liverpool, West Ham and Aston Villa, playing at least 80 minutes each time.

Mainoo started again at the City Ground, although United’s coaching staff were wary of the physical demands on an inexperienced 18-year-old playing Premier League football that regularly at that intensity.

Mainoo was felt to be struggling a little during the first half, understandably so given the intensity of the schedule, and with the score still at 0-0 at the break, Ten Hag decided to replace him with Scott McTominay. United went on to lose and much of the post-match debate centred on the decision to replace Mainoo.

Substitutions of Hojlund have been poorly received by the Old Trafford crowd on other occasions, while a run of replacing Garnacho was questioned during United’s slump following the March international break.

Even so, minutes of players this age have to be managed. And over the whole season, it is no coincidence that Garnacho, Hojlund and Mainoo are the three to have been substituted the most by Ten Hag.

Garnacho has been brought off 24 times, Hojlund 23 times, while no player has ended a higher proportion of their appearances sitting among the substitutes than Mainoo. In that way, Ten Hag has been able to ease the burden on their young shoulders.

But still, this year, United have given 7,197 top-flight minutes to players who were under the age of 21 at the start of this season — more than in all but one of their previous Premier League campaigns.

That was 1995-96, the year of Alan Hansen’s “You won’t win anything with kids”, when the Class of ‘92 first began earning regular starts and minutes together and emerged as the foundation of Sir Alex Ferguson’s second great — and arguably greatest — side.

The next most was 2005-06, when the pool of young first-team regulars was smaller but founded on Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, two talents who would define another era of dominance at Old Trafford.

Nobody is suggesting that United are on the cusp of comparable periods of success, especially not after falling to eighth place and their lowest Premier League finish. Next year will be another transitional year. Another to rebuild, perhaps under a different manager.

Yet what those parallels from the past show is that, if a rebuild is to be successful, then at least a couple of young, talented players capable of taking on first-team responsibilities despite their tender age are at the centre of it. In Garnacho, Mainoo and Hojlund, United have a foundation to build from.

Additional reporting: Laurie Whitwell

(Top photo: Getty Images)