Can Kobbie Mainoo be the Man Utd midfielder Ruben Amorim wants him to be?

Mainoo has not started a Premier League game this season (Picture: Getty)

Seven matches into the new Premier League season and Kobbie Mainoo is English football’s forgotten man.

Having failed to start a single league game for Manchester United , his contribution stands at meagre 113 minutes of largely forgettable action. Something has to change.

Described by Sir Alex Ferguson as ‘the heart and soul’ of the club after helping deliver an FA Cup triumph in 2024, Mainoo’s prospects at Old Trafford have taken a bleak turn.

His absence from the team persists despite the lack of invention and guile in United’s engine room and with next summer’s World Cup firmly on the horizon, the midfielder has already tried to find a way out on loan – efforts that will be renewed before the January transfer window.

For Mainoo, it’s an untenable situation. Ruben Amorim has demanded more from the 20-year-old having explained he is in direct competition with Bruno Fernandes for a starting berth with the captain now operating in a deeper midfield role. But his problems under Amorim predate that decision.

Having become key member of the first-team under Erik ten Hag, Mainoo’s influence waned significantly under Amorim. Last season, he completed the full 90 minutes in just five of 18 league matches under the Portuguese coach, taken off before the 75th minute on eight of those occasions.

Mainoo has struggled to impress Amorim (Picture: Getty Images)

United legend Paul Scholes identified it as a problem at the start of the year with his former teammate Phil Jones telling us in the summer those concerns over Mainoo’s ability to ‘get around the pitch’ across 90 minutes are a major factor behind his lack of game time.

They are sentiments shared by another former United star in Wes Brown. ‘He needs to be playing football so he will be very disappointed with how the season has gone,’ he told Metro . ‘I’m sure he is not at his full peak yet fitness wise. 24, 25, 26 [years old] is when you really come into your own physically. But at the same time, he has got talent and everyone can see he has got talent. The World Cup is coming up and he will want to be part of that, but he will need to play football. I’m not sure what happens from here.’

No one is expecting Mainoo to transform into N’Golo Kante. His composure, press resistance and ability to receive and move the ball in tight spaces are assets that make him one of the best young players in his position. But it is clear Amorim wants more.

All signs suggest Mainoo is working to bridge that gap. Left out of the England squad, he has been working on his strength and conditioning in Spain in a clear message to Amorim that he is doing everything in his power to force his way back into the team ahead of the trip to Liverpool on Sunday.

Mainoo and Garnacho looked to be the future of United (Picture: Getty Images)

But if he is to win the manager’s trust, that work will have to take place under his gaze at Carrington. Mainoo’s workrate has rarely been questioned but having the stamina and running power to correctly apply it may require extra work.

Every single metric of a player’s physical output will now be recorded and scrutinised on any training pitch in the Premier League in order to determine where a player is at and if that output can be carried into a competitive game environment.

Stephen Smith, CEO and founder of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare and performance analytics, believes improving a player’s natural engine is certainly achievable.

‘You can improve things significantly,’ Smith said. ‘Different coaches, different clubs will have completely different game models and that will lead to completely different expectations in terms of the physical output of players. For any player, their current physical makeup might not necessarily align with the output their coach is looking for. That may be way we don’t see certain players on the pitch because the fitness staff are working on developing that.

Mainoo has been putting in the work on the training pitch (Picture: Getty Images)

‘What you generally see is clubs looking at exactly what are their game demands. Like what is the total distance covered they want from a player, how many accelerations and decelerations per match, how many changes in direction are they performing, how frequently are those happening, how much of that distance covered is spent sprinting or in high-speed running. They will be then trying to determine where the player sits in this, from their previous outputs, and if they are they showing the ability to deliver the numbers required across all these metrics.

‘Then, from a developmental perspective, they will look to deliver a fitness programme that allows the player to be exposed to those kinds of demands in a training environment. Programmes that ask, can you show the ability to accelerate and decelerate within a specific window or a specific interval? Can you showcase the amount of high-speed running and sprinting that is needed? Can you show that across the lengths or durations that are going to happen in a game?

Amorim wants more from his midfielder (Picture: Getty)

‘If a player starts at a capacity of let’s say 60 per cent of that, they will be building programmes that go from 60 to 65, from 65 to 70, 70 to 75, all the way through. The vast majority of clubs are very sophisticated in the way they think about that and you would see fitness and sport science staff having conversations with the coach about the physical level they want to then develop training designs that elicit that.’

Will the numbers be enough to win Amorim’s trust? Above all else, direct conversations between the player and his manager will be the key to him getting back into the team.

‘I hope he speaks to the manager to get more information [on] what he wants from him and what he needs more of because Kobbie is a young talented guy and needs to be playing more and hopefully that can happen,’ Brown said.

‘Fitness wise, you can always get better. You can always work on it so you feel sharper on the pitch. But Kobbie’s game is all about when he has the ball and what he can do with it. If he was fitter, that would make him even better on the pitch.