Mason Greenwood on the naughty step

Manchester United striker Mason Greenwood has been late to club obligations a couple of times and is now sitting on the naughty step.

Reports suggest that the 19-year-old striker has failed to stick to timekeeping standards and as such has been warned by United’s boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

The Norwegian is known to want a change to the mindset and attitude amongst the players and so taking a relatively hard line with the youngster is to be expected.

Greenwood missed United’s dramatic late win against Newcastle United on the weekend, and then failed to travel with the squad to Paris for their game against Paris Saint-Germain, which also saw the side take three points with a late goal from fellow forward Marcus Rashford.

Solskjaer claimed that the player was absent with a ‘niggle’ but he has been training with the first team as usual, which makes such a claim open to question.

Such a problem is probably no disaster. Greenwood must now compete with Edinson Cavani for a place in attack, and he already had rivals for a spot in the front three from Jesse Lingard, Anthony Martial, Daniel James, Juan Mata and Rashford, so watching the team succeed without him should be a warning that he cannot count on being first choice, nor is it guaranteed he will be missed by his side.

United play next on Saturday when they host Chelsea at OId Trafford for an evening kick-off. Solskjaer has generally emerged the more successful of the pair when he has faced Frank Lampard, and the visitors had a poor result at home to Sevilla earlier in the week in their Champions League games.

United have had a poor start to the season so far but using Paul Pogba and Donny van de Beek appears to have had a positive impact on results.