Manchester United suffered through a tough season. After a Premier League title in 2012/2013, United’s season was a sputtering affair. Following years of stability with Alex Ferguson, they moved on to David Moyes who was fired after just one year on the job. The main reason? A seventh place finish that saw the team miss out on not only the Champions League, but the Europa League as well. The strangest part is that all this happened with largely the same team that won it all the year before.

Maybe the reason they struggled was a failure to keep up with the Joneses. Maybe it was because Moyes wasn’t a good fit. But one reason for United’s struggles was their deficiency in the center of the pitch. Their midfield wasn’t the most creative bunch and couldn’t create many goals.

To look at United’s midfield, first you must discern what position Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck play. If you count them as attacking midfielders, and not strikers, then the goal output from United’s midfielders isn’t terrible. If you count them as strikers, then it starts to look bad.

In all reality both are somewhere between an attacking midfielder and a striker. Rooney is tied to a role closer to midfield thanks to Robin van Persie’s presence and Welbeck is tied to a similar role thanks to van Persie and Rooney’s presence.

Let’s, for all intents and purposes, say that both Rooney and Welbeck are forwards, or at the very least not classified as midfielders due to their tendency to play up top for stretches.

After that the midfield consists of the likes of Michael Carrick, Antonio Valencia, Marouane Fellaini, Tom Cleverley, Shinji Kagawa, Ashley Young, Adnan Januzaj and Juan Mata. With the exception of Januzaj and Mata, goals were almost non-existent from this group. And even for those two, the goals weren’t exactly flowing.

Mata, the mid-season addition, and Januzaj, the young sparkplug, contributed a combined 17 goals through scoring and assisting. A solid output considering they only had 29 starts between them.

After that you have misters Carrick, Fellaini, Cleverley, Kagawa, Valencia and Young. Between them they made a combined 103 starts. Between them they contributed 14 goals. That’s simply not good enough for a team with United’s aspirations, and it showed as the defending champs struggled.

The team has already brought in Spanish playmaker Ander Herrera from Athletic Bilbao. He contributed 10 goals in La Liga last season, and while he’ll bring energy and creativity to a team clearly lacking it, United will need more to get back to the summit of the Premier League.

New coach Louis van Gaal has already made a superb signing in Herrera. He’ll need to make more like it if he wants to win silverware in Manchester.

All stats courtesy of http://www.whoscored.com/ unless otherwise noted.