Table of Contents
Day 12 — Tracker | 13 November 2026
Manchester United sacked Michael Carrick on Thursday. The club sits 18th in the Premier League, with eight points from ten games, one win, five draws and four defeats, and no clean sheet in any of them. It is the club's lowest position ten games into a top-flight season since 1986-87, the year before Sir Alex Ferguson was hired. Through all of it, one thing has not changed: Bryan Mbeumo starts every game, and he keeps scoring.
The Cameroon forward has started all ten of United's league matches this season and played 892 of a possible 900 minutes. His four league goals make him the club's top scorer in the league, and account for four of the 14 goals United have scored in total. Only Bruno Fernandes has more goals than him across all competitions. The verdict, sixteen months into a reported £65 million move, is that Mbeumo is doing his job. The team around him is not doing theirs.
The numbers so far
Mbeumo's four league goals this season have come in four different games. He scored in the 5-2 win over Ipswich Town on 30 August — still United's only league win of the season — then against Everton on 6 September, Tottenham on 10 October and Leeds United on 18 October. He has not scored since, going four matches in all competitions without a goal, including Sunday's chaotic 4-4 draw with Aston Villa, in which he played 82 minutes.
The underlying numbers are steady rather than spectacular. Four goals from 30 shots, 13 of them on target, at 0.40 goals per 90 minutes. That scoring rate is almost identical to his first season at Old Trafford, when he scored 11 league goals in 33 appearances at 0.38 per 90. His shooting volume is up, from 2.52 shots per 90 last season to 3.03 this season. The one figure that has collapsed is assists: none in ten league games, after three in 33 last season, and 45 in 222 league games for Brentford. He has one assist in all competitions this season, in the Champions League, where he has played four matches without scoring.
A shooting-quality study by Grandient Sports, reported by Football365, ranks Mbeumo the Premier League's highest-graded shooter this season, with a score of 85.8 — ahead of Chelsea's Pedro Neto on 85.6 and Manchester City's Erling Haaland on 85. The study grades the execution of every shot rather than the outcome. It is a soft metric, and it should be read that way, but it captures something real about this season: Mbeumo is getting his shots away cleanly, in a team that creates little and finishes less.
Playing out of position
The context for the numbers is an injury. Benjamin Sesko, United's recognised centre-forward, has been out since the Carabao Cup defeat to Brighton on 16 September, with a shin injury, and is reported to be sidelined until at least January 2027. Carrick confirmed before the Chelsea game that the Slovenian would be out for a long period, with no return date set. In his absence, Mbeumo — a right winger by trade, who scored 20 league goals from the right at Brentford in 2024-25 — has been asked to play through the middle.
It is not his position. Mbeumo does his best work running at a back line, not holding the ball up with his back to goal, and the difference shows in the details: his touches are down, his duels are down, and the ball comes back too quickly when it goes up to him. That is not a criticism of the player. It is a description of a squad with one fit striker-shaped hole and a £65 million winger filling it. United are reported to be looking for a short-term striker in the January window, which would let Mbeumo return to the right — the position from which he produced his best season in England.
Last season, for comparison
The comparison with his first season at Old Trafford is instructive. In 2025-26, Mbeumo made 33 league appearances, scored 11 goals and added three assists, and United finished third. He scored 12 goals in all competitions. His first goal for the club came in the second minute at Anfield on 19 October 2025, and he scored twice against Brighton six days later. His season was interrupted by the Africa Cup of Nations, where he played five matches for Cameroon, and he returned to score the opening goal in the 2-0 derby win over Manchester City on 17 January 2026.
The Brentford baseline is the standard he is judged against: 20 league goals in 38 games in 2024-25, starting every match, in a side that finished tenth. Across six seasons at Brentford he scored 65 league goals in 222 appearances. The United move was supposed to put that production on a bigger stage. The production has travelled. The stage has not cooperated.
The money
The fee was reported at £65 million, with a further £6 million in performance-related add-ons, taking the deal to a reported £71 million in total. The clubs never disclosed the figure. Mbeumo signed a contract to June 2030, with the option of a further year, and his wages were reported at around £200,000 a week. Brentford's record departure, by some distance, eclipsing the £40 million they received for Ivan Toney.
For a player of Mbeumo's output, the fee has never been the problem. Eleven league goals in a debut season, four more in ten games of a collapsing second season, and a goal every 223 league minutes since he arrived. The problem is what the fee was supposed to buy: a functioning attack. United have scored 14 league goals in ten games and conceded 19. They have gone eight league games without a win.
What this means for Cameroon
Mbeumo is 27, with 35 caps and eight goals for Cameroon as of October 2026. At the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco he played five matches and recorded one assist — setting up Karl Etta Eyong's winner against Gabon in the opening game — as Cameroon reached the quarter-finals and lost 2-0 to the hosts. Cameroon did not qualify for the 2026 World Cup, so the next stage that matters for him internationally is next summer's Africa Cup of Nations in East Africa, hosted by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
That is the continental implication of this strange season. Mbeumo's club form is the least of Cameroon's worries: he is fit, ever-present, and scoring at the same rate as last season. What Cameroon need is for him to arrive at AFCON 2027 in his best position, playing for a functioning team, rather than carrying a broken one through the middle. A January striker signing at Old Trafford would be good news for United. It would be just as good for the Indomitable Lions.
The next test comes quickly. United return from the international break away at Liverpool on 22 November, their first game of the post-Carrick era, against the side Mbeumo scored his first United goal against. Whoever is in charge, the instruction will be the same one it has been all season: find Mbeumo, and let him shoot.
Sportblot will carry the continental story from here.
Sources: FBref standard, shooting and playing-time stats for Bryan Mbeumo (crawled 13 November 2026, through Matchweek 10); Premier League table via TheStatsAPI and Vavel, 13 November 2026; Sporting Life, 12 November 2026, on Michael Carrick's sacking; TNT Sports, 9 November 2026, on United's league position; The Peoples Person, 6 November 2026 (updated 13 November), on Mbeumo's all-competitions record and the Grandient Sports shooting study; Associated Press / PA, 21 July 2025, on the reported £65m fee plus £6m in add-ons and the contract to June 2030; Mirror reporting, July 2025, on reported wages of around £200,000 a week; The Athletic / Daily Sports, October–November 2026, on Benjamin Sesko's shin injury and reported absence until at least January 2027; Wikipedia / FBref goal logs on Mbeumo's Cameroon record and AFCON 2025 (five appearances, one assist, quarter-final defeat to Morocco). Transfer fee and wages are reported figures, not disclosed by the clubs. All money figures in this article are reported as labelled; no estimated figures are used.
