There is no denying that it has not been a great start to life at the London Stadium for new manager Nuno Espirito Santo, and whilst he inherited a poor and out of form set of players from former charge Graham Potter, his opening four games may have shown signs of an interesting style of play but they have only returned a single point with three pretty poor defeats.
There is a long way to go in the 2025/26 Premier League campaign though, and whilst we will hopefully start showing some signs of consistency soon and begin picking up points on a more regular basis, we all know that what we eventually end up doing in the January transfer window with our wheeling and dealing could be key to us enjoying a far calmer and more successful second half of the season. We need to get it right, as getting the window wrong could see us feature in football quiz questions moving forward when it comes to having one of the poorest seasons ever.
Nuno will likely want to improve his options in all areas of the pitch, but the undoubted focus in the New Year will be our incredibly leaky defence, and hopefully far more punch at the top of the pitch and one name that keeps cropping up on the speculation rumour mill is Manchester United attacker Joshua Zirkzee. The 24 year old Dutch international arrived at Old Trafford back in the summer of 2024 for a reported fee of £36.5 million from Bologna, but it has been a pretty torrid spell for the previously very impressive youngster.
Some of that has been on him and how he has adjusted to life in our top flight, but equally with the Red Devil’s being an absolute shambles both on and off the pitch, there is good reason to believe that somebody with the calm mentality of Nuno could nurse him back to his earlier form and he had a good goalscoring record in his time with Anderlecht and Bologna in particular.
Zirkzee clearly has no future under Ruben Amorim and he will want to be involved in the up coming World Cup, so it is a safe bet that he will be on his travels when the window opens and some are reporting that he has already requested that they make him available, and we are being heavily linked with having an interest in him. Whether or not we would be interested in just a loan deal, or a straight permanent transfer would remain to be seen, but you would think we would favour a loan with an optional buy clause so Nuno could see whether or not he could work his magic here and revitalise the player.
The main concern from our point of view would be how risky a deal might be given his current form levels, as ultimately whoever we bring in we will need them to have a pretty immediate impact and even if Zirkzee did find his feet and confidence again with us, it would still likely be a 10-15 game spell before we might have him back to his goalscoring best. The worry is obviously that we may not be in a position to carry him for that long before he started contributing.
Image Source: unsplash.com