Offloading the error-prone goalkeeper has added to rather than solved the goalkeeping conundrum at Old Trafford

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ltay Bayindir: age 27, seven Premier League appearances for Manchester United and a catalogue of game-costing errors. Senne Lammens: age 23, has never played in English football. Tom Heaton: age 39, last Premier League game January 2020, for Aston Villa. André Onana: age 29, 72 Premier League matches, Champions League and Europa League finalist, and a catalogue of game-costing errors.

The first three are goalkeepers Ruben Amorim can field on Sunday in the derby at Manchester City and beyond. The last is the keeper who is joining Trabzonspor for the season in what appears to be one more head-scratching development at a club that continues to seek clarity.

The case of a gang-of-four keepers reduced to three is the latest complex puzzle Amorim has to solve if he is to survive, and United prosper. It encapsulates the quasi-sisyphean task piloting the club has become since Sir Alex Ferguson retired 13 years ago, where an attempt to solve a problem – in this case, remove an out-of-form Onana – compounds it when the man Amorim drafts in, Bayindir, proves as faulty.