With Kobbie Mainoo out, Jack Fletcher is poised to maintain Manchester United’s 88-year youth record – The Athletic
Kobbie Mainoo will miss Manchester United’s match at Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday with a minor injury and, while that in itself is disappointing for a player eager for more minutes, it does also raise the prospect of wider-reaching deflation.
United have since 1937, for 4,332 successive games, included an academy graduate in their first-team squad. That strand of youth has been present through 88 years and 44 major trophies, including three European Cup triumphs and 18 of 20 league titles.
But Mainoo was the link keeping the chain in tact. He has been the sole representative five times this season, including in the last four games straight, always on the bench.
Tyler Fredricson and Tom Heaton have made matchday squads a handful of times too, but neither since the Brentford game, which heralded the arrival of Senne Lammens as the new No 1, shifting Altay Bayindir to back-up. United’s healthy squad has limited Fredricson’s chances.
Inevitably conscious of the threat to an historic record that has been cherished since the work of historian Tony Park in 2013 for his book Sons of United, the club have included Jack Fletcher, 18, in the travelling party for the trip to north London.
Fletcher, a skilful left-footed midfielder, was signed from Manchester City in July 2023 alongside his twin brother Tyler for a combined fee of £1.25million, but fits all the criteria laid out by Park.
These points are: United must be the player’s first professional team; he had to have joined before turning 18; and needs to have appeared for the youth team.
Fletcher also happens to be the son of Darren, the former United academy graduate who won six league titles and a European Cup among nine major honours, and is now the club’s under-18s head coach.
Jack Fletcher’s inclusion would keep the incredible unbroken sequence going, but with Marcus Rashford, Scott McTominay, and Alejandro Garnacho leaving the club since 2024, the thread appears close to snapping.
Head coach Ruben Amorim is aware of its significance as a symbol of United’s traditions with youth development.
“We want to maintain that, I don’t want to be the guy to break that record, or that idea,” Amorim said in September. “If you see the past of Manchester United, it’s built on kids who grow up here for a long time. I think that should be our goal in the future, so I should try maintain that, that is for sure.”
The run has come close to ending before, on one occasion under Sir Alex Ferguson in March 1992. Clayton Blackmore was the only player who had come through the academy in Ferguson’s squad for a game at Sheffield United.
Then Ferguson got the youth set-up thriving, the Class of 92 formed the backbone of his team for near enough the next two decades, and the statistic was discovered.
Mainoo’s absence is described as a knock, so he may come back into the fold soon, but his long-term future is uncertain. So too is a record that stands United out in global football.
