It should be an insult to the history of Manchester United that Rasmus Hojlund wears the No 9 jersey once graced by Sir Bobby Charlton. But as with almost everything else at this sclerotic institution, the drift from magnificence to rank mediocrity is just numbly accepted. At least Harry Maguire and Joshua Zirkzee had the decency at the final whistle to appear chastened by a 12th defeat this season, United's worst return after 25 games since the 1973-74 campaign that ended in the club's relegation. Hojlund, by contrast, was blank. The Dane had produced a display of quite staggering ineptitude, at one stage caught offside after a pass from a goal kick, and he barely even looked bothered.
While it would be unfair to lay all United ills at a 22-year-old's door, Hojlund has become emblematic of the waste, the decay, the resignation to competitive oblivion. Second to every loose ball, exhibiting all the mobility of an Ikea wardrobe, he finished the first half here with the fewest touches and fewest passes of any player on the pitch. He squandered possession, lost his physical battles, regarded hold-up play as a wholly alien concept. Omar Marmoush has already surpassed him for Premier League goals, with three, and the Egyptian has only played top-flight English football for two-and-a-half hours.
The most galling element of it all was that Hojlund cost £72 million. While convention dictates that Antony is named as the worst signing of this benighted era at United, this toothless import surely runs him close. The folly of the negotiation still beggars belief. Hojlund joined Atalanta for £15 million in the summer of 2022, scored a mere nine goals in 32 Serie A games, only to be plucked out of obscurity by United 12 months later for nearly five times that amount. Compounding the agony is the fact that the club could, had they shown some semblance of ambition, snaffled Harry Kane instead. Instead Kane joined Bayern Munich for £100 million, furnishing them with 75 goals and counting.
It is when Tottenham and United face off that the absurdity of this decision is thrown into the sharpest relief. They might be vying with each other for bottom-half ignominy in the league, but the reminder that Kane could be wearing red rather than lilywhite is one to torment United supporters that it never needed to be this way. With a centre-forward of Kane's calibre, they would at least have had the chance of a consequential rebuild. With Hojlund, they are left careering along a road to nowhere. United are 15th, a position that should bring a shame to everyone associated with it. Any notion that glory is in their grasp has been exposed as a daft delusion of grandeur. The only way they can convince themselves of being a top-six club again is if they turn the table upside down.
Until now, Ruben Amorim has been spared the opprobrium. Through his candour, his refusal to shy away from his players' manifest failings, he has even attracted a certain admiration, a sympathy that he has risked torpedoing his own career by swapping the stability of Sporting Lisbon for the full-systems dysfunction at Old Trafford. But he cannot hide behind these scorelines forever. Having lost eight of his 14 league games, he is increasingly bereft of answers. While he has made it his signature to crouch down on the touchline, forensically scrutinising every United move, there was a moment in the second half where he cast a long, mournful stare at the ground. Incapable of jolting his players into gear, he too conveyed little appetite for the fight.
You can blame injuries all you like, highlighting the fact that United's bench was so stacked with 17- and 18-year-olds that it resembled a sixth-form holiday camp. But Amorim, if he is truly as talented as his extravagant send-off in Lisbon suggests he is, should be summoning a tune out of those he has available. The problem is that the players are all hopelessly confused by the tactics he is asking them to follow. Harry Maguire was the most obvious rabbit in headlights this time, bizarrely stopping dead in his tracks as a dangerous cross swung in towards Son Heung-min. Casemiro was all at sea, not even watching Bruno Fernandes at times and crumpling to the turf pleading for a free-kick even when nobody was near him.
The doubts are starting to be publicly expressed. Gary Neville witheringly argued that Amorim's midfield, with Casemiro and Fernandes creating yawning chasms through their lack of connection, would not even have been seen at under-nines' level. While that might be hyperbolic, it does illustrate how the fundamentals at United have collapsed. The defence is shot to pieces, the midfield is makeshift, and supposed target man Hojlund has not scored in his last 15 appearances. In this line-up, only Alejandro Garnacho had the capacity to attack space and make runs in the final third with genuine menace. Even he, though, was far from his best, drawing a spectacular flounce from Amorim when he missed despite the nearest defender barely being in the same postcode.
"I have a lot of problems," Amorim lamented. "My job is so, so hard." That is an alarming cry for help from the man entrusted with finding the cure. In one sense, he is a beleaguered passenger in the chaos, trying to fashion a silk purse from the sow's ear that Erik ten Hag bequeathed. The trouble is that this team is the product of over £1 billion in player investment at United since 2019, and he is expected to make it work. But how? This summer is billed as the defining test of his tenure, but what player in his right mind is going to be tempted to join a club in such a parlous state? Fifteenth in the league, with a goal difference of minus-seven: it is hardly the most seductive prospectus. And the deepest concern is that the longer United's decline goes on, the more that it is normalised, becoming less a cause of alarm than a bleak fact of life.