Alejandro Garnacho and another night to forget. He is an awkward fit for this Man United system

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Alejandro Garnacho wore his frustration like a neon sign at the City Ground, cracking the ball against the advertising hoardings after being given offside and getting a yellow card for that show of dissent.

Rasmus Hojlund responded to his Manchester United team-mate’s angst by giving a momentary pep talk, but the rest of the game brought the 20-year-old no reprieve.

At the final whistle, when Nottingham Forest’s 1-0 win was confirmed, Garnacho fell to the turf and lay flat on his back, physically exhausted and probably mentally exhausted too.

The win keeps Nottingham Forest third in the Premier League table and firmly in the mix for Champions League football, and it keeps United 13th.

After 30 seconds Mason Mount pulled Garnacho up and patted him on the head, and later the United head coach Ruben Amorim fielded more questions about a player whose natural game still seems an awkward fit for this system.

Garnacho’s booking came after he had wasted a rare opportunity to attack his opponent one-on-one, having been switched from right to left No 10 at half-time by Amorim, and it looked a case of self-flagellation. Bruno Fernandes had played a comfortable pass out wide and Garnacho should not have strayed beyond the Forest backline.

Inevitably too, Garnacho is a player wrestling with an adapted role. Playing as the left 10 gives him more scope to pull out to the touchline and cut in on his right, but either role typically brings him narrower than he has been used to while coming through United’s academy and into senior football. Finding the right balance of position is proving tricky, so too the suitable impetus when on the ball. This turmoil inevitably colours perceptions of what might happen in the summer — after Napoli bid £40million for him in January.

At Forest, Garnacho was once again the player with the most shots in a United game, this time six – two more than the next-highest Patrick Dorgu – but none of them troubled Mats Sels. Most of them came in a flurry after his yellow card.

He did draw an excellent block from Ryan Yates when dribbling into the box from the left following a long pass by Fernandes, and screwed a shot narrowly wide from the resulting corner, which perhaps took a deflection off Morgan Gibbs-White.

But the prevailing mood was one of futility and there were ironic jeers from the Forest fans when Garnacho booted the ball high into the Bridgford Stand 18 minutes from time. Diogo Dalot had teed him up with a good pass out wide after the ball had broken loose from Fernandes again looking for Garnacho with a pass over the top.

(PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

The problematic comparison is that the United centre-back Harry Maguire was more threatening in his eight minutes on the pitch than Garnacho — or Rasmus Hojlund and Joshua Zirkzee for that matter. Maguire had two shots – one a header wide from Dorgu’s pull-back and another a close-range effort cleared off the line by Murillo from Noussair Mazraoui’s cross – that surpassed the expected goals figure for Garnacho’s six attempts. Maguire registered 0.59, and Garnacho 0.19. Hojlund had one negligible effort and Zirkzee none.

The sight of Maguire up front in what looked a 4-4-2 was at odds with Amorim’s strict faith in his 3-4-2-1 formation, but he insisted it was a special circumstances.

“In the end of the game when the opponent is just protecting the box, if you look at the central defenders of Nottingham they are really comfortable with a line of six, not five,” he said. “We can reach the final third, but then we have to put the ball inside the box because it’s hard to make combinations to get inside. Harry Maguire, when he’s attacking in set pieces, is the maybe the best player in our team. So inside the box you are not a defender you are a striker. So it was that idea to put one man that is really good on heading to score a goal.”

Having criticised Garnacho in the past, Amorim defended the 20-year-old here. “He is making everything. He’s trying. Sometimes you have one day that you are doing the right things, but in the final third, you are not that good, that can happen,” he said. “The most important thing for me is that when he needs to run back, he is running back. Of course we want a player that has one against one. Sometimes he is trying too much, he has Dorgu to make a move, but I think he wants to help the team to do his best, sometimes he doesn’t make the best choice, but you can point to any player today.”

Garnacho was quiet in the first half and loud in the second, but as Amorim alluded to he took shots rather than played passes in crucial moments. He moved his campaign tally to 68 shots, the 11th most in the Premier League (10 behind Fernandes, with Hojlund on 21 and Zirkzee on 25). Garnacho is joint-61st in the league when it comes to goals scored (four).

His understanding with Dorgu, who had a difficult game, clearly needs work. They looked to be on different wavelengths at times when attacking down the left. Amorim also swapped Leny Yoro from right-sided centre-half to left at the interval to maintain that link with Garnacho.

Of course, Anthony Elanga provided a counter-point – a player whose speed gives him a frightening advantage which is now being matched by finishing quality. He sprinted 85 yards in 8.9 seconds to score the only goal, leaving Garnacho in his wake with a tame attempt at a tackle. Dorgu and Mazraoui also failed to intervene.

Elanga, in the opinion of Amorim, is thriving possibly because he is away from the pressure of United. It is obvious that regular football has helped and Forest’s style provides a platform from which he can spring his singular talents. That is useful context when thinking about Garnacho.

Overall, United had 24 shots to Forest’s eight – their joint-most on record in a Premier League away game without scoring (going back to 2003-04) – and there is a lesson in that. Forest have created 50 big chances in Premier League this season and scored 50 goals to sit on 57 points. United have created 54 big chances and scored 37 goal to collect 20 points fewer.

(Getty Images)

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