Avoiding burnout: Why Alejandro Garnacho should be spending more time on the bench
Manchester United may have a future superstar on their hands. If they want to maximize the impact he'll have in his prime, they need to start that work now
When Erik Ten Hag named his starting XI for the Manchester Derby in late October 2023 it didn’t seem particularly egregious at the time. Injuries at the back necessitated the selection of Jonny Evans and Harry Maguire. Scott McTominay had scored three goals in the last two Premier League matches which was causing Ten Hag to build the side around him and Bruno Fernandes was shifted out to the right to accommodate that.
Building the side around McTominay may have been questionable tactic but the bottom line was this was the norm at that point in time. There were few people, if any, clamoring for old Alejandro Garnacho to start. Garnacho had started only one of United’s last 10 matches—a Carabao Cup game against a heavily rotated Crystal Palace side—and had managed just one goal in 12 appearances, that goal coming in the same cup tie.
In hindsight the starting XI that day was noteworthy because it was the last United match of the 2023-24 season that Garnacho didn’t start. Three days later Garnacho was in the XI for United’s Carabao Cup tie against Newcastle, just as he was for the final 38 games of the campaign all the way through the FA Cup final.
Garnacho quickly became not just one of United’s best attackers but one of their most important players on the pitch. Only six times in that 38 game run did he play less than 75 minutes in a game. He finished season with 10 goals and 5 assists in all competitions (7G 4A in the league). Only Bruno Fernandes and Rasmus Hojlund had more goals or goal contributions.
This season has been more of the same. Garnacho was in and out of the team for the few months of the season while recovering from a deep Copa America run but he’s started eight of United’s last nine games and the final four of the Erik Ten Hag era.
Garnacho is one that both fans and the club have been excited about for years. Two season ago Kwestthoughts published a piece on how Garnacho was quickly becoming United’s most important player. He’s an academy graduate with the potential to become a superstar.
This piece is not about whether or not Garnacho will become a superstar. Actually, the basis of this piece is based on the assumption that Garnacho will one day be a superstar.
And if Manchester United believe that one day Alejandro Garnacho will be a superstar who can carry the attack of the team, they should be playing him less then they currently are right now.
Note: When referring to players ‘first team’ or ‘senior’ minutes we are referring to league minutes only unless otherwise noted.
Right now, Garnacho is one of United’s best attackers but he’s far from a superstar. He currently leads United with seven goals and four assists in all competitions - though more than half that total has been accumulated in two Carabao Cup matches. In Garnacho’s 43 Premier League starts, he’s scored in just five of them.
Garnacho is logging a ton of minutes for someone his age - which itself is indicative of how good he is - but his impact in there is debatable. He may be one of United’s best attackers who gets the most shots, but his final output is still very low. United finished eighth last season and are currently 12th with Garnacho leading the charge. They could still be a mid-table side without him.
At 20 years old Garnacho is already logging a ton of minutes. He’s currently on pace to play 2533 minutes in the Premier League this season, which would put him at 63.15 Premier League 90’s before his 21st birthday. That’s not factoring in any of the minutes he’s logged in cup matches either1.
This is all important because there are no free minutes in the Premier League. Age curves are a very real thing and every minute you play wears on your legs. In 2024 we know enough about aging to know that attacking players tend to peak around the age of 262. Essentially the top players break in around 18 or 19 years old and from there have about 10 years before they’re done performing at the top level.
There are of course course outliers. Everyone loves to bring up Messi and Ronaldo who performed not just at a high level but at a significantly higher level than anyone else until well into their late 30s. Let’s just say these two players are outliers of the outliers and we shouldn’t be comparing anyone to them.
There are of course other players like Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane who continue to produce at the top level into their 30s but how many of them do in the Premier League?
To help find the answer I turned to Stathead powered by FBref.
Over the last 10 Premier League seasons there have been 89 instances where an attacking player aged 29 or older has played at least 1710 minutes - which is half the available minutes in a season. There’s a grand total of 56 different players on the list but 52 of those 89 instances have come from just 19 of the players.
Simply playing half a Premier League season past the age of 28 is a rarity, but how many of those players are still performing at the top level?
We’re not talking about the stars of the game here. We’re talking about the best of the best. The guys that carry their teams attack at the top of the table. In order to do that, you need to scoring at least 0.75 goals and assists per 903.
When we take that list of 56 players who played more than half a season aged 29 or older and say how many of them also had 0.75 G+A per 90 that same year, the list gets reduced down to 16 occurrences from 104 players, with 10 of those 16 occurrences coming from the top four players.
Seven of the 10 players on this list played as center forwards in their qualifying seasons, further emphasizing the challenge a wide player like Garnacho would be facing.
Essentially the best possible outcome is Garnacho turns into the next Mohamed Salah, which hell, that’s a great outcome. It’s also unlikely simply because Salah himself is levels above Son or Pedro. While the odds are high that we’ll eventually see someone do what Salah has done, the odds of any one player being the guy to do it are very low.
There’s a bigger reason why it’s unlikely to see Garnacho have the kind of longevity Salah had. They have different start dates.
Jamie Vardy is the famous example of a player who just kept performing at the top level after the age of 30. Vardy himself credits his longevity to the fact that he got such a late start to his top flight career.
My legs feel great and people say the older you get your pace goes, but it's not affecting that side of things as of yet. Hopefully because I came into the game later, it means I've got longer to go.
Vardy didn’t log a single minute in the football league until he was 25 years old. Yes he played years of non-league football before that but clearly the intensity there is just not the same as the top divisions.
If we dive deeper into that list of players there something that jumps off the page very quickly. Vardy isn’t alone in having a late start date.
As already mentioned, at 20 years old Garnacho has already logged 3947 first team minutes. When Mo Salah turned 20 he’d yet to log a single minute of first team football. It wasn’t until he was 23 that he logged over 2000 minutes in a season.
Similarly Pedro had not played a single minute in the league when he turned 20. He was 22 the first time he logged over 2000 minutes in a season. He hit 0.76 G+A per 90 during his age 29 season with Chelsea but never hit those kind of numbers again.
Even among the strikers on the list it’s a similar story. Callum Wilson had logged just 1987 first team minutes before his age 21 season, with 81 percent of those minutes coming in non-league football. Pierre Emerick Aubameyang had logged just 2715 minutes before his 22nd birthday. When he was 26 he was moved from the wing to a more central role, which gave him some more longevity. Even then, his lone season of qualified production came when he was 29.
Harry Kane, who got his first senior minutes at the tender age of 17, had logged 3684 prior to his 21st birthday. That’s 263 minutes fewer than Garnacho already has - and Kane was playing centrally!
Of the wide players, only Son Heung-min has minutes that can compare to Garnacho. Son broke into the Bundesliga at 18 and logged 4632 first team minutes before his 21st birthday. That’s by far the most of the wide players and yet it’s still almost 10 games less then what Garnacho is on pace to play! Son is still going impressively strong but he’s also never consistently a guy who could carry a top four attack.
So many great Premier League players stopped being great (in England) after their age 28 season. It’s just extremely difficult to have that kind of longevity in the Premier League. If Garnacho is going to have longevity he would literally have to buck a bunch of historical trends.
Betting on a player to be historically good - rather than just really freaking good - is not a particularly smart bet. Therefore you want to maximize how much superstar time you can get out of Garnacho before he turns 28 and the number one thing you don’t want to do is burn him out too early.
Garnacho is currently on pace to play just over 28 90’s in the Premier League this season. Cutting that number dow by six, to 21, and continuing to monitor his minutes in the cups is not all that much but it could make a difference in the longevity of his career. It would also probably make United better in the short term considering right now Garnacho is having much more of an impact off the bench then he does when he starts.
The development of young players is not linear. You don’t just improve little by little every game until suddenly you’re at the very top. If Garnacho is going to become a superstar one day it’s not going to be because he played a minimum requirement of minutes and he’s “eligible” to become one. If he’s going to be a superstar it’s going to be because he wakes up one day and everything suddenly clicks and then he goes to make “The Leap.”
Garnacho isn’t a superstar right now. If you believe he’s going to mature into one down the line you don’t want to waste those minutes during a stage of his career where he isn’t playing like a superstar. If you don’t believe he’s going to become a superstar, then things are even more questionable because he just hasn’t done enough to justify all the minutes he’s getting. Even if he’s United’s best option right now, he’s not the difference between the team qualifying for the Champions League or not.
If United overplay Garnacho now, they’re likely robbing themselves of his potential ability during a time of his career where he can have a much greater impact. If they truly believe he’s going to develop into a superstar… let him rest now.
Or all those minutes in added time as the Premier League has started making games even longer
The more defensive of a player you are, the longer you tend to last
And frankly, I think that’s a low cutoff
Zlatan and Ronaldo only qualified due to their goals totals being penalties. Both their non-penalty goals+assist per 90’s were below 0.75. In terms of G+A per 90 this was the worst season Ronaldo had since he was 20, further emphasizing just how damn difficult the Premier League is
Completely agreed. There's not just the risk of burnout, but I am not sure if playing him so frequently is actually developing his game at all either.