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The majority of the news surrounding Manchester United in the last 24 hours has been dominated by Cristiano Ronaldo's terrible scoring streak.
The Portuguese superstar has not scored in his last five club games, which is his longest goalless streak in 12 years. Indeed, he has not scored in 2022, and his most recent Manchester United goal came against Burnley in the final game of 2021, in which he also assisted.
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However, Ronaldo's recent poor form is not a passing fad. If we go back further and look at his numbers for both club and country in December and November, we can see that Cristiano has been struggling for over three months which as a results has made him lose his title as the most valuable player.
Since November, how many goals has Ronaldo scored?
Ronaldo has only scored four goals in the 16 games since his Champions League double against Atalanta in Bergamo on November 2. In that time, he scored five goals: one away at Villarreal on November 23, two against Arsenal on December 2, one against Norwich on December 11, and the aforementioned strike past Burnley on December 30.
Two of those five goals were penalties, meaning Ronaldo has only scored three times in open play in the last three months. During this time, he also only provided two assists, both against Burnley and Norwich, both of whom were in the relegation zone.
Given his status as a supposedly world-class superstar and the club's highest-paid player, earning €30 million per year this is clearly insufficient. It's one of the reasons why Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick would have felt compelled to rest him in Tuesday's 1-1 draw with Burnley.
Ronaldo cannot blame his poor scoring form entirely on interim manager Rangnick, as it occurred under four different managers: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Michael Carrick, Rangnick, and Portugal coach Fernando Santos. Cristiano has been written off in the past and proven his doubters wrong, but at 37 years old, he is now in his prime.