Kobbie Mainoo has been described as “in a good place” by caretaker boss Darren Fletcher as Manchester United prepare for life after Ruben Amorim. Fletcher said Mainoo has been calm around the squad and that a run in the team could be close.

Things became difficult for Mainoo earlier in the season. He requested to leave the club on loan in the summer and was thought to be pushing for a temporary exit this month, only for Amorim to insist he should remain as valuable backup to Bruno Fernandes. With Amorim gone, Mainoo is thought to be in higher spirits behind the scenes.

“He seems in a good place,” Fletcher explained. “Kobbie doesn’t give you much, so you wouldn’t know if he was in a good place or not so good. He’s like that. That’s his natural way.

“But I know him well and I’ve known him for a long time. I’ve seen him around throughout the season and I’ve had conversations with him in general, but he’s in a good place.

“I know Kobbie and I think he knows me and he knows [interim first-team coach] Travis Binnion, so he’s comfortable with his environment, he’s in a good place, he’s trained well.”

Mainoo’s future at Old Trafford is expected to be one of the first matters for United’s interim manager. Former players Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Michael Carrick and Ruud van Nistelrooy are all thought to be under consideration for a role that would buy the club time as they search for a permanent replacement to Amorim.

Fletcher will take charge of Sunday’s FA Cup third-round game against Brighton & Hove Albion, a match that could hand Mainoo just a second start of the season after the infamous Carabao Cup defeat to Grimsby Town.

“I think we’ve had good success in the competition in recent years—won it a couple years ago, lost in a final,” Fletcher continued. “It’s an amazing competition. It’s the first trophy that I won as a player. It’s a special tournament.

“With the season so far—not in Europe, out of the League Cup, Premier League obviously—the FA Cup’s a trophy that we should be vying to win and giving ourselves every opportunity to win.”

Roy Keane launched a pointed criticism of Manchester United’s leadership this week, arguing that the continued presence of former figures has hampered successive managers. The former club captain singled out Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill as lingering influences and suggested their roles on the club board remain a problem.

“You see who’s making the decisions at Manchester United ,” Keane tailed off during a rant on Sky Sports this week, “you still have Ferguson and David Gill hanging on like a bad smell.” Ferguson and Gill remain non-executive directors and regular figures at Old Trafford, a reality Keane said affects those appointed after Ferguson left the dugout.

The club’s history was used as context. United hold a joint-record 20 top-flight titles but only three managers are responsible for those successes. Ernest Mangnall led in the first decade of the 20th century, Sir Matt Busby oversaw the club’s peak across the 1950s and 1960s, and Ferguson later dominated for decades. Busby, like Ferguson, did not fully relinquish influence when stepping away. After appointing Wilf McGuinness as his successor in 1969, Busby kept the title of manager while McGuinness was designated “chief coach.”

“Not everyone, sadly, would play for Wilf,” United’s David Sadler would later reflect. “The side as a whole did not give 100% effort for him. It was as simple as that.” Busby returned for an ultimately doomed second spell, a fate Ferguson has so far avoided.

Keane also directed his ire at the club’s recent recruitment and decision-making, criticising minority co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and director Jason Wilcox for their roles during Ruben Amorim’s “disastrous 14-month reign.” “What happens in these job interviews? I’m intrigued,” Keane asked, his beady eyes dancing around the Sky Sports studio. “Why do they keep giving certain people a job? What happens in the interview that they sit there and go, and 12, 14 months later, ‘he’s not the guy for us.’

“Almost forget the CV,” he added. “You need something on your CV, of course, that you’ve won a trophy or managed a long time. But you’ve got to look somebody in the eye and go, ‘Are you the man to get us places?’” Keane dismissed the idea of Darren Fletcher as the permanent manager and expressed a preference for Eddie Howe.

Darren Fletcher has moved to protect Manchester United’s academy after remarks from Ruben Amorim left the club’s youth pathway under scrutiny. Fletcher, serving as caretaker manager, emphasised the academy’s long record while preparing his squad for Sunday’s FA Cup third round tie with Brighton & Hove Albion.

Mainoo has played just 228 minutes of Premier League football this season—he was starting for England in the Euro 2024 final 18 months ago—and Amorim was at risk of becoming the first United manager since 1937 not to name an academy product in a matchday squad when he picked up an injury in November. The record was preserved when Amorim selected Jack Fletcher, Darren’s son, to be on the bench—though he was criticised for many considered to be a “token gesture” selection.

“We are not going to stop with academy players. It doesn’t matter about the result. We will continue with these small details which are the foundations of our club,” Amorim said after that game about United’s youngsters. His subsequent comments painted a very different picture.

Fletcher, who took charge of the 2–2 draw with Burnley on Wednesday, has assumed responsibilities that include dealing with the media, something Amorim was loathe to do. He used his first full briefing to distance himself from a narrow narrative and to underline the club’s history of producing talent.

“I just think historically, and this club’s built around the academy, we’ve got an amazing academy,” Fletcher told reporters. “Our record speaks for itself. I’m not going to sit and stand here and say anything other than that. We’ve got an amazing record. I think it’s hard to beat in terms of the history of clubs around the world. I think we’ve got some amazing players, some amazing talents.

“I think what I see is a lot of hard-working, humble young players who aren’t perfect because they’re young and they’re learning and they’ve got a lot to do.”

Fletcher also addressed availability issues around Bryan Mbeumo and Noussair Mazraoui, both at the Africa Cup of Nations, and the situation around Harry Maguire’s return. “I don’t think so. I think it’s too close a turnaround, so we’ll have the same players available for the game as we had against Burnley,” he said of the AFCON duo. On Maguire he added: “He has been out for a while, so it’d probably be looking at his load and things like that. That decision’s not been made, but I think you’ve seen the players coming back the other night.

“You’ve seen Mason, you’ve seen Kobbie, you’ve seen Bruno. There has to be some understanding of their first minutes. They might have to be careful a little bit with that process to build back in. So I think Harry will probably be in that situation for the weekend.”