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Manchester United’s rebuild under new manager Ruben Amorim seems to be gathering pace this month, with the Old Trafford club reportedly keen on adding Paris Saint-Germain forward Randal Kolo Muani to their ranks before the end of the current transfer window. According to the Telegraph, the Premier League giants are exploring an option to loan the France international for the remainder of the season, before deciding on whether or not to sign him permanently in the summer. Reports elsewhere have linked Tottenham and Juventus with a move for the 26-year-old forward.
Rumour R. Kolo Muani Centre-Forward
Paris SG ? Tottenham Ligue 1 Premier League
Why do PSG want to sell Kolo Muani?
Kolo Muani made the move to Paris in 2023 off the back of a remarkable spell at Eintracht Frankfurt, which led to the Ligue 1 giants paying no less than €95 million for his signature. Unfortunately for the player and his club, that transfer fee wasn’t matched with equally impressive performances and to date Kolo Muani has managed to bag just 11 goals and seven assists in 54 appearances for PSG. However, the failure of such a high-profile move may not be entirely down to the player. Kolo Muani’s arrival in the French capital coincided with the club making a crucial managerial change, as Luis Enrique joined the club to replace Christophe Galtier. And seemingly overnight, Kolo Muani’s prospects of playing under a head coach that knew French football inside out were completely ruined, as Enrique came in with entirely different ideas.
“Kolo Muani does not fit the Enrique's style of play,” said Joachim Durand, Transfermarkt’s Ligue 1 expert, when asked about the forward’s struggles in Paris over the course of the last 18 months. Who then went on to explain why the forward has played so little football since making the move to PSG. “Enrique has a very precise idea of the profile he wants in a No.9: he must be comfortable technically and good with his back to goal, moving between the lines and combining in tight spaces,” added Durand. “In short, a sort of target man. However, Kolo Muani is a striker who is more at ease in transitions, on the counter-attack, when he has space in front of him. Obviously, the arrangement does not work.”
Indeed, so far this season Kolo Muani has made just two starts for Enrique’s team in all competitions and racked up just 453 minutes of football as a result. And when we compare him to the club’s other forward players in the table above, we can see just little time the Spanish manager seems to have for the French player. PSG clearly prefer to play with a front three of Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembélé on either wing, with Kang-In Lee or Marco Asensio through the middle. And, most notably, Kolo Muani has fallen behind new signing Désiré Doué in the pecking order. Which explains why the club would be more than happy to move the forward on this month, to allow him to pick up game time and a possible big move.
How good is Kolo Muani?
Considering Enrique and PSG’s stance on Kolo Muani, it would then be easy to assume that the French player simply isn’t good enough for the Ligue 1 giants and would therefore be a risky move for club’s of equal stature, such as Man Utd or Tottenham. But in this case, it may be worth considering whether the 26-year-old talent has simply become the victim of circumstance at the French club. “Even though Kolo Muani has sometimes put in catastrophic performances, it seems that the Spanish coach is hard to please,” notes Durand when asked about the player’s ability and form in Ligue 1. “In fact, he is always on the lookout for a player capable of fulfilling that role (of targetman) in his squad. He has tested a number of players in this position (Asensio, Lee, Dembélé, Doué) but none of them seems to have really convinced him.”
Indeed, the key question shouldn’t be whether Kolo Muani is good enough for a club like Man Utd or Tottenham, but whether he’s the right kind of player for their system and tactics. As Durand noted, the forward hasn’t worked out at PSG because he can’t play as a classic No.9 for Enrique’s side, which makes perfect sense since he was often deployed as an inside forward that drifted out to the left wing for Frankfurt during his time in the Bundesliga. And, as we can see in the graph above, that led to the player bagging a remarkable number of goals and assists for the German side.
Over the course of his single full season at the club, Kolo Muani bagged a remarkable 40 goals and assists in all competitions and averaged no less than 0.99 goal contributions per 90 minutes. That, to no great surprise, has fallen during his time at PSG, but not by as much as some would expect. Despite being used largely as a substitute, Kolo Muani has still averaged around 0.67 goals and assists per 90 minutes, which isn’t bad at all when we consider that he’s often been tasked with coming off the bench to play in a position that isn’t suited to him.
Should the likes of Man Utd or Tottenham get serious about signing Kolo Muani this month, they’d do well to bear in mind what made him such a success at Frankfurt in the first place. Rather than step in as a replacement to the penalty-box strikers in their squads, the French talent would likely need to be played off the left wing if they hope to get the best out of him. Only there will he find the space to run by defenders and exploit gaps behind defensive lines. Whether that is the profile of players that either English club is looking for remains to be seen, but there’s little doubt that if they were to sign Kolo Muani as a back-up No.9, they may find themselves suffering the same frustrations that have dogged Enrique for the past two seasons.