Manchester United's reunion with Cristiano Ronaldo has not gone the way that either party would have hoped.
Since the appointment of Ralf Rangnick, the forward has only scored two non-penalty goals with another coming from the spot and overall in the league, he has failed to be the driving force to win United the league that many pundits claimed he would be. His enforced absence from the starting XI that lost 4-1 at Manchester City offered a suggestion of what life without the Portuguese would look like.
United's galling derby-day defeat has left Ralf Rangnick's side 22 points behind leaders City and the gap between themselves and City and Liverpool is vast. So where has it gone wrong - and what role does Ronaldo play in this?
Some have pointed to the obvious factor of Ronaldo's age, at 37 he is no longer somebody with the same youthful exuberance he once possessed and while a decline in his physical ability seems very likely, there are ways to mitigate this.
Many fans have suggested that Ronaldo has used his goalscoring ability to become more of an in-the-box poacher and his deployment as a lone number nine in a 4-3-3 under Rangnick seems to lend to this idea. The suggestion probably comes from the success that Edinson Cavani found in this role last season.
But when Ronaldo plays you see his reluctance to take up this mantle.
He drifts into the wide spaces and wants to pick up the ball outside the box, instead of moving into the space and looking to get on the end of crosses and passes into the box from Jadon Sancho, Bruno Fernandes and Anthony Elanga.
But his former coach Maurizio Sarri, who managed the player at Juventus may have provided the answer. In an interview with Sky Italia, he said: "Cristiano scored more Serie A goals in his season with me than any other.
"He was prepared to play centre-forward in a few games when we had an emergency situation, but he didn’t much like the idea of doing it regularly.
"In those situations, you end up challenging the certainties that the player has. Ronaldo scored 35-40 goals per season by starting from that wider position, so for him, it was an almost absurd request. That is understandable for the way he plays."
This creates an issue for both the team and the manager. Firstly that is another player that United have recruited that favours playing on the left-hand side and perhaps more pertinently, it raises questions over Ronaldo still having the capacity to occupy that left-wing role in the more physical Premier League compared to when he was first here.
If Ronaldo wants to play on the wing as well, this presents a serious issue in the striker position. Cavani has hardly been available this season and that only leaves an out-of-form Marcus Rashford to occupy the striker position (who ironically is also better off the left). Bruno Fernandes played as a false nine in Ronaldo's absence at City and other creative solutions would include playing Anthony Elanga centrally but it's patently obvious that United have a dearth of natural options to fill an increasingly worrying void at the tip of the team.
This is the latest in a long line of problems that highlight the importance of United's summer rebuild and also how difficult it will be for United to secure a top-four place ahead of Arsenal and Tottenham at the end of the season.
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