Manchester United have finally answered Harry Kane transfer question

 The Tottenham Hotspur striker has been heavily linked with Man Utd in the past but Solskjaer now has an answer.

There is a fair amount of symmetry in the plights of Anthony Martial and Harry Kane right now and it doesn't reflect overly well on Jose Mourinho.

In fact, a simple exchange between two former Manchester United players in the BT Sport studio, following the 1-0 win over FC Copenhagen, summed up the situation succinctly.

Robin Van Persie, asked about Martial and how far he has come under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, turned to Paul Scholes and remarked innocently: "He was struggling under Mourinho right?" Scholes' reply was typically deadpan: "Who wasn't?"

The transformation of Martial under Solskjaer is simply incredible. This is a player who announced himself to Old Trafford with an outrageous solo effort against Liverpool as a 19-year-old; someone whose talent has never in doubt, but who stagnated during two-and-a-half crucial years of his career under Mourinho.

The numbers speak for themselves, with Martial managing just eight goals in 42 appearances in Mourinho's first United season (2016/17) and then 11 in 45 in his second. His tally for this season is now 23 in 47.

International call-ups to the France squad got rarer for Martial, despite the fact he was into his twenties and should have been peaking. He was farmed out to the left-flank under Mourinho, stripped of the No.9 jersey and had to watch Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Romelu Lukaku come and go in his favoured centre-forward position.

All the while, there was talk that United should sign a certain England captain, Kane, who was viewed as a guarantor of goals. The Tottenham Hotspur striker was rightly hyped between 2015 and 2019 as one of the world's greatest strikers and won the 2018 Golden Boot to prove it. Transfer talk was rife that Kane was the man to bring excellence back to the faltering United front line

Anthony Martial

But then something happened to both Martial and Kane. Mourinho lost his job at Old Trafford in December 2018 and by November 2019 he had wound up at Tottenham, replacing Mauricio Pochettino.

Kane hasn't struggled under Mourinho and goal record always tends to stand up to criticism, but there hasn't been the same zip in his game with the Portuguese at the Tottenham helm.

He and Martial and very different players, but Martial is now matching the Spurs man for pure numbers yet is offering an extra dimension to United's overall play.

Kane scored 18 Premier League goals last season at one per every 144 minutes, Martial 17 at one per every 155, yet the Frenchman provided three times as many assists as Kane. He also had Marcus Rashford next to him, scoring 17 goals (at one per every 156 minutes) and laying on seven assists, while Mason Greenwood scored 10. And behind them since January has been Bruno Fernandes, who already has eight Premier League goals and seven assists to his name.

Mourinho was at pains to defend his record with strikers amid question marks over Kane in June after the 1-1 draw with United. Former Arsenal man Paul Merson suggested the England man could leave Tottenham over the style of football being played under Mourinho.

Even the manager's response brought Martial into the equation.

"Because I respect him a lot, I want to be nice in my answer," Mourinho said of Merson. "I don’t think he’s ready for a bad answer so I try to be nice and say something that people can think a little bit.

"If you watch and analyse the game, compared Harry Kane with Anthony Martial. It was a game of many chances, it was a game where the two strikers had a lot of chances.

"Do you give credit to my defence for Martial's game, do you give credit to the United defence for the occasions we create or didn’t create? You have to look at it in a balanced approach."

Mourinho even went on to name-check the goal records of strikers he has managed in the past — the likes of Didier Drogba, Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema — in his own defence. He was at pains to suggest he could get the best from Kane. He was scrabbling around for answers because Martial had offered something in the game without scoring, while Kane had been isolated and anonymous.

Solskjaer, in liberating the United frontline and placing quality players around a confident and resurgent Martial, has done what Mourinho couldn't. He has found the centre forward answer.

You only had to watch Martial skip through the defenders in the win over Copenhagen to see the player United now have. Only a superhuman display from goalkeeper Karl-Johan Johnsson denied the Frenchman a goal, but it did not matter.

All that talk that United need to sign Kane has gone. It bubbled up to the surface as recently as this summer, though was quashed by the likely £200million fee that would have to be paid.

Given the rise of Martial, that would be a monumental waste of money.

Man United