Zirkzee scores on debut as United pinch opening win

It is, apparently, not how you start but how you finish. Joshua Zirkzee started his Manchester United career with a telling finish that bodes well for the rest of it.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Manchester United 1
Zirkzee (87)

Fulham 0

He began his debut on the bench and ended it as the match-winner. Old Trafford may have a new goalscoring hero and if the evidence of their opening night was that Erik ten Hag’s side needed one, a newcomer obliged.

The United manager stands accused of signing too many of his fellow Dutchmen. For a £42m buy, however, it amounted to an ideal beginning, a veritable theatre of a dream debut. Even in helping Bologna qualify for the Champions League last season, Zirkzee was not prolific. Yet it only took 26 minutes for him to open his United account with a goal that showed he can be both finisher, but also much more than a penalty-box poacher.

Zirkzee had dropped deep to collect the ball, fed it wide to Casemiro and accelerated into the box. He stuck out a left leg to poke in Alejandro Garnacho’s cross. Two substitutes combined for an opening-day win that, for the first time in Ten Hag’s reign, sent United top of the league, albeit when 18 other sides are yet to play. Perhaps more pertinently, it illustrated a skill as a gamechanger that the United manager demonstrated often in his first campaign in England but more intermittently thereafter.