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Reports suggest that Manchester United are set to bid for Bologna's Joshua Zirkzee - but would he be another Mason Mount?

One year ago, give or take a few weeks, Manchester United made a mistake. It's not the only one they've made in recent times, but it was an expensive one - they spent a reported PS55m on Chelsea's Mason Mount, a highly gifted player that it rapidly became clear they had no idea what to do with.

It was a chin-scratching transfer from the start. Mount was a fine attacking playmaker, but United already had Bruno Fernandes. He could also play as an inverted winger on the left, but they already had Marcus Rashford. As it transpired, Erik ten Hag tried to crowbar him into a deep central midfield role, where Mount looked deeply uncomfortable and ineffective before succumbing to a string of injuries.

Mount may yet come good, of course, and he surely has PS55m worth of talent in his boots, but it amounted to a club spending the lion's share of their annual transfer budget on a player who didn't fill a position of immediate need and who didn't seem to fit anywhere in the head coach's tactical set-up. Now, as reports suggest that the club are close to triggering Bologna forward Joshua Zirkzee's EUR40m (PS34m) release clause, they may be in danger of doing it all again.

Like Mount, Zirkzee is a fine player. There is disputing the quality of his technique or the intelligence with which he plays the game. He's superb at darting between little half-spaces in and around the defence, excellent at working the channels and wonderful at making late runs to score goals. But if United intend to persist with Ten Hag's 4-2-3-1 formation (and giving that they are offering the coach a new contract, they are presumably backing his broader strategy too) then it's hard to picture how he fits in.

Zirkzee, who is 23 and has impressed since joining Serie A side Bologna from Bayern Munich two seasons ago, is not an obvious fit for any of the attacking roles in Ten Hag's formation. Under Thiago Motta's tutelage, he usually played as one of a pair of pseudo-tens alongside Lewis Ferguson - playing mostly just outside the penalty area behind a central striker and attacking the channels while the wing-backs offered the width.

Nor is he a winger or inverted forward and he isn't used to attacking the wide areas or the byline in the way that the likes of Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho often have to given the relative lack of support from the full-backs. He would suit a club who look to get wing-backs into the final third on the overlap, but United didn't do that very often last season and there's no specific evidence to suggest that Zirkzee would be at his best if he became the wide option himself - although in fairness, he's unlikely to be any worse than Antony.

Like Mount, he's best suited to a team who look to play quick exchanges around the box and to a role which sees him harassing defenders from between a wide player and a central striker - and as with Mount, the closest thing United have to such a player is Fernandes, whose position is (quite rightly) nailed down.

There are ways United could accommodate Zirkzee's unquestionable talent, of course. They're expected to undergo a large-scale squad overhaul and could presumably buy the aggressive wing-backs required to play with a pair of narrow tens behind a central striker, a move which would suit Mount as well, although heaven knows where Garnacho or Antony fit into such a vision. Maybe Ten Hag sees a player with the attributes to perform a completely different role to that which he has at Bologna and is proven right. They could even end up selling Fernandes, as has been mooted in some sections of the press, in which case the primary objection to Zirkzee's signing would vanish altogether.

But there is a very high chance that Zirkzee would be another wonderfully gifted player who simply doesn't mesh with the current players at the club or with the manager's playing style and methods - and United have a recent track record with those kind of mistakes. Let's hope that if Zirkzee does make the move to Old Trafford, his forward progress isn't held up by a system that doesn't suit him.