Mbeumo’s eight-game drought slows Manchester United’s attack
Bryan Mbeumo has gone eight games without a Manchester United goal, and the dry spell has now stretched to two months since he last scored on February 7. The forward arrived last summer for £71 million and remains United’s top Premier League scorer this season with nine goals, so the drop in output has landed at the wrong time for the club’s attack.
Mbeumo’s early surge
Mbeumo’s start at Old Trafford looked like a direct return on the fee. He scored six times in his first four months, then kept delivering in marquee results by scoring in United’s first win at Anfield in 10 seasons, following that with a double against Brighton and later the opener in a 2-0 victory over Tottenham.
He had also scored the first goal of the Carrick era in a 2-0 win over Manchester City and the equaliser in the 3-2 win at Arsenal. Those finishes came after he had already posted 20 league goals for Brentford in the previous season, a record that made his early United scoring run look sustainable rather than lucky.
Tottenham to Brentford
The last goal came against Tottenham on February 7. Since then, he has not registered a goal or assist for two months and has failed to score in his last eight games for the club.
There has been activity in the run without end product. Seven of those eight games were starts, and he provided assists for Benjamin Sesko against West Ham and Everton. But he has not contributed to a goal in any of his last six appearances, a sharper slump than a simple finishing miss in one match or two.
Manchester United’s attack
United’s reliance on him has grown because no other player at the club has scored more Premier League goals this season. That makes the current run more than a personal dip: it has removed the team’s most productive league scorer from the scoreboard during a stretch when he was previously driving wins by scoring early and in decisive moments.
His form has also shifted after December, when he went to the Africa Cup of Nations and Ruben Amorim was sacked while he was away. Amorim had described him as a “working machine”, but the current picture is less about energy than end product, with a recent one-shot outing in the 2-1 defeat at Newcastle and zero shots on goal in the 2-2 draw at Bournemouth.
Mbeumo is preparing to face his former club Brentford on Monday, carrying the burden of nine league goals and an eight-game scoreless run at the same time. Manchester United need the version that opened games, finished chances and changed results; the recent version has still worked, but has stopped turning possession into goals.
