God knows the number of times I've asked myself that question; a club that claims to have over 58 scouts and yet proper identification of talent is almost non-existent for the club. The club, as recently as 2018, upgraded their scouting department and the relative inefficiency of the system left the then United manager, Jose Mourinho baffled. It was said that Mourinho knew little about what many of the club scouts do, save for chief scouts Marcel Bout and Jim Lawlor with whom he was in contact.

Football writer James Homecastle told BBC 5 live sport that the Red Devils don't make enough use of your network as it is. If that is the case, it makes no sense for there to be such a large number of talent spotters and yet talent cannot even be spotted. Even executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward - for all the flak he's taken - recently admitted that Manchester United's recent scouting has been shambolic.

The United chief has said he wants the recruitment under Ole Gunnar Solksjaer to be judged in the 'coming windows' and has admitted that the system to identify talent was fundamentally wrong.

Woodward told United We Stand via Goal.com: 'The system wasn't set up in the right way. Twelve scouts reporting to one chief scout was more set up to say no - too many exceptions to the process were made historically while this was being fixed. We also have to hold our hands up and say that recruitment wasn't at his best in recent years.'

Scout my foot!