Summer signings point to a brighter future

It’s been a mixed start to the season for Manchester United, in terms of results, but there has been one undoubted positive: the impact already made by the club’s three summer signings.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer spoke openly about transforming the squad during the final few months of last season, but he is not the first United manager in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era to express that as one of his aims.

Recruitment is a notoriously difficult business: an inexact science, within which, a dizzying number of factors can affect whether a player settles and soars at a new club. But after just four games, Daniel James, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Harry Maguire look at ease, at home and unruffled by the demands of playing for Manchester United.

Reds everywhere seem to be in almost universal agreement about that: James, Wan-Bissaka and Maguire are the three players nominated for our first Player-of-the-Month award of the season. They’ve contested most of our Man-of-the-Match polls.

Their success is important, I feel, because it points optimistically towards the future.

Players come in all shapes and sizes, bearing all kinds of different skills and personal qualities. Previous managers understandably had their own ideas about what kind of players they would like the club to acquire, and what kind of playing style they wished to implement.

But changes in management inevitably lead to transition. Players bought by one particular manager might not ideally suit the playing style the next individual is hoping to achieve.

Sir Alex's incredible longevity meant we'd often only had to add one or two players at the end of campaigns, in those spare moments between gulps of champagne. A methodical and patient approach is required here.

There is simply no magic bullet; no manic barrage of transfer activity that can take us from sixth place to the Premier League title in a few months, as much as we’d all love that.

It can be hard to embed yourself successfully at United, but the incoming batch of 2019 could barely have started better from an individual perspective.

Obviously, the team feels it should have more points on the board, which is frustrating, but Wan-Bissaka’s endless reel of slide tackles, Maguire’s authoritative presence and James’s effervescence – both on and off the ball – have added encouraging new dimensions to the side.

Admittedly, more dimensions are needed still; Maguire told journalists after the Saints draw that the team needs to keep the ball better; to control matches in a more dominant, arrogant fashion.

But these three signings indicate that Solskjaer and his assistants have a good handle on the type of players that typically succeed here. So far, their instincts have been proved correct.

If future acquisitions can settle as well as these three have, then there will be plenty of reason for optimism.

Mixed results on the field may still occur. But this summer's incomings, matched with the aggressive, attacking football we’re trying to play, suggest to me that Solskjaer and co have a strong vision for the future.

The opinions in this story are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Manchester United Football Club.