Crystal Palace defeat proves Man Utd are in no state to challenge for the Premier League title

Chasing the game with only a few minutes left, what manager would not want the luxury of being able to call upon £120m of talent to spearhead a last-gasp rescue act.

With 78 international caps between them, the Manchester United cavalry was not lacking in experience for the sodden Old Trafford battlefield on Saturday, but Harry Maguire and Donny van de Beek perfectly represented everything that is wrong about a haphazardly-assembled squad as they plummeted deeper into the depths of despair against Crystal Palace.

A fourth defeat from seven league games that sealed a worst start to a league campaign since 1989-90 was not on them, the damage had been done. But the fact this is all United had to turn to – two big-money acquisitions who don’t even want to be there – sums up just where this excuse for a footballing behemoth are at.

It turns out last season seems to be more of an aberration – this United squad remains in no state to inspire a long-overdue title tilt.

Ill-thought-out transfer dealings have been United’s modus operandi in the post Sir Alex Ferguson era.

Huge names have come in, for record fees, without thinking where they would fit and whether the manager could work them into their respective footballing ethos.

The performances of new arrivals last season, however, helped inspire a mini-revival. Casemiro finally added adequate quality in the midfield anchor role, Lisandro Martinez formed a centre-back partnership with Raphael Varane that threatened to reach Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic levels of cohesion, while Christian Eriksen looked like the bargain of the year after joining on a free.

Fast forward to Saturday’s latest disasterclass, the squad feels as lifeless and crestfallen as at any point since Ferguson left. The other player to come on late in the day against Palace cost £50m, but into his ninth season in Manchester, we are still waiting for Anthony Martial to look like the once world’s most expensive teenager.

As the performances of Casemiro, Martinez and Eriksen have dropped off, and the goals of Marcus Rashford have stopped bailing United out, failure to improve vital areas with suitable signings in the summer is coming back to haunt the club’s hierarchy.

Mason Mount is an exceptional player in his own right, but just like Angel Di Maria or Paul Pogba before him, another ineffective showing against Palace added further credence to claims he is the latest star player unable to find a home in the United system.

Rasmus Hojlund is another example of a luxury United, in their current rotten state, do not have.

Hojlund could well be a superstar in the making, as he has all the attributes to lead the United line for years to come. However, such an embryonic talent, with only nine goals in a top European league to his name so far, is going to need time, and plenty of it, to fulfil that potential.

In reality, having made improvements last year and started to assemble a squad worthy of the name, United needed someone for the here and now and the fact they had one of the best in the business waiting for the call makes it all the more galling for their desperate fanbase.

Harry Kane would not have cost much more than Hojlund, but instead went to Bayern Munich where he has nine goals in seven starts for his new team, compared to the young Dane’s one.

The party line is the club wanted to look more to the future, but the present needs too much work for such an approach to be justified.

United supporters believe Erik ten Hag can be the revolutionary figure the club has been crying out for. Quite how he goes about bringing lasting change, with the misshapen tools at his disposal remains to be seen.