Declan Rice, Jadon Sancho, and Raphael Varane. These are the three key stars Manchester United might recruit this summer, but there's no point in recruiting world-class talent if you can't perform the fundamentals correctly, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer must address his team's failure to protect from set-pieces as soon as possible.
Although United's training for Thursday's game against Liverpool could have looked new, with the club installing beds in executive boxes to give players the choice of sleeping throughout the day, their issues on the field were all too common.
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While United took the lead thanks to Bruno Fernandes' header, Liverpool quickly responded and completed the comeback when Roberto Firmino scored the visitors' second just before halftime, climbing highest to go past Dean Henderson.
The narrative that has plagued United this season hit again: they conceded from yet another set-piece, and they won an unfavourable record as a result, emphasizing their failures and unwillingness to protect from certain situations.
This season, 33 per cent of United's Premier League goals have come from set-piece scenarios (14), the highest percentage in the league, despite the fact that this figure is hardly shocking.
Their vulnerability in this region has been targeted all too much this season, and although Liverpool's second goal was technically labelled as a set-piece goal, it's worth mentioning that their equalizer wasn't, but it also came from a corner, with United struggling to clear their lines.
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So, what is Solskjaer doing to solve this problem? He has a few choices available to him.
The MEN understands that recruiting a centre-back is Solskjaer's focus this summer, with United officials involved in signing Varane or Pau Torres, and that finding Harry Maguire a fitting partner in the heart of the defence is an appropriate first move toward resolving this problem.
Though Henderson didn't have his best game in goal against Liverpool, keeping the 24-year-old in the starting lineup, which seems likely, may also help fix United's set-piece problem since he is a more dominant penalty-box presence than David de Gea.
Furthermore, Solskjaer has another choice, which is to hire a set-piece expert to coach, and although this strategy is unconventional, it is becoming more common in the modern game - Jurgen Klopp, for example, has a throw-in specialist coach at Liverpool.
"I think everybody should improve all the time, and that's what I realized when I came here as a player," Solskjaer previously said, commenting on his man-management strategies, and it might be time for Norway to take his own advice.
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