Bryan Mbeumo’s run without a goal stretched into a ninth game on Sunday, turning what began as a promising season at Manchester United into a mounting worry for the club and for the player himself.
Mbeumo joined Manchester United last summer and has nine Premier League goals this season, but he has not scored since February 7 and has not contributed a goal or an assist for two months. The £71 million signing made an immediate impact when he arrived, scoring six goals in his first four months and delivering decisive strikes in some of United’s biggest matches.
Those moments include the opener that began the Carrick era — a first goal in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in January — the equaliser in a 3-2 win at Arsenal, a brace in a 4-2 victory over Brighton and the goal that helped secure United’s first win at Anfield in 10 seasons. He also scored the opener in a 2-0 win over Tottenham and added a goal on February 7 against Tottenham, his most recent goal for the club.
Context helps explain why the run has been so alarming: Mbeumo arrived with a strong Premier League record after scoring 20 league goals for Brentford the previous season, and his early form at United suggested he would carry that output on. His progress, though, was interrupted when he went to the Africa Cup of Nations in December; while he was away, Ruben Amorim was sacked and Mbeumo returned into a dressing room that was adapting under Carrick. The contrast between his first months at Old Trafford and the current drought is stark.
The tension is in the details. Mbeumo has failed to score in his last eight games despite starting seven of them. In his last six appearances he has not contributed to a single goal. Against Newcastle, who finished a man down, he produced “an absolute stinker,” blazing over the bar with the goal gaping in his only attempt. He managed zero shots on target in the 2-2 draw at Bournemouth. Even when he has run defenders ragged, the final product has often been missing.
There have been bright patches in the run — Mbeumo provided assists for Sesko against West Ham and Everton — but those positive actions are now more distant highlights than recent form. The pattern is simple: decisive early contributions followed by a worrying fallow spell that has lasted more than a year in fits and starts, and two months without a tangible attacking return at all.
Manchester United’s sequence of results has at times masked the problem. Mbeumo’s goals helped spark three successive league victories in January, and his early scoring made him a central figure in a team that expected him to shoulder a significant attacking burden. Yet goals are the clearest measure of a forward’s value, and the numbers make the case: nine Premier League goals this season, six in his opening months, and then a sudden, stubborn stoppage.
The striker’s own voice cuts through the statistics. Mbeumo has said his mentality is "to always be better than I was yesterday," a measure of how he sees the situation and how the club will expect him to respond. Ruben Amorim has called him a "working machine," praise that now sits uneasily next to recent performances that critics say lack the end product previously on show.
There is a simple test ahead: Mbeumo will be judged by whether he can end this drought and return to the decisive scoring form that justified a big summer move. If he does, the early-season memories — the goal at Anfield, the brace at Brighton, the opener in the Carrick era — will look like a prologue. If he does not, United will face hard questions about the immediate impact of a high-cost recruit whose last meaningful goal contribution came on February 7.
Whatever comes next, Mbeumo has framed it in personal terms. His challenge is not to reset the clock but to live up to the standard he set for himself: to be better than yesterday.
