Ralf Rangnick: Manchester United board said no to signing a forward in January

The club's board rejected late attempts to sign a forward in January, leaving them short of options in the second half of the season.

Anthony Martial was allowed to join Sevilla on a loan in January before Mason Greenwood was suspended by the club with just three days left of the transfer window.

One of the potential solutions along with Dusan Vlahovic, signed by Juventus, and Luis Diaz, who has been a revelation since arriving from Porto on January 30, is one of the things that United could do before the deadline.

Instead United failed to act and have been almost entirely reliant on the Funchal man as a source of goals, with Edinson Cavani limited to just six appearances this year due to injury.

In their last 10 league matches, the side has scored just 13 points, nine of them from the man known as "Ronaldo".

The answer at the time was no, there was no player on the market that could really help us, and there were a few.

We had four days off at the time and on the Sunday I was informed about the issues with Mason Greenwood and obviously Anthony Martial had already left and then I was aware that we had some strikers missing and it might make sense.

• Inside the rise of Luis Diaz

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I spoke to the board and asked if we could try and get a player on loan or a permanent deal, but the answer was no.

If we would have been able to find it in 48 hours, it would have been worth trying and discussing internally, but we didn't.

Rangnick: The good thing is everyone realises how big our problems are

There is a feeling within United that the club were faced with a dilemma in January, whether to allow Rangnick to make a signing that his successor may not want or whether to preserve their resources and support a new manager in the summer.

In previous seasons, United have been stung by rushed recruitment and unsuccessful deals late in the window.

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If Ten Hag want to challenge for the league title again, they will need to improve all areas of the squad, not just the goalkeepers.

If there is a good thing about the poor season, it is that everyone knows how big the problems are and what needs to be done to raise the level again and be a serious title contender again.

If there had been no problems before I came, I wouldn't have come.

There were some problems the team already had at the end of November and as we all know in the first couple of months until the end of January we were improving, we conceded less goals, and then in that international break we had a point average of 2.1.

We have two games to play to try to play as well as we possibly can, get as many points as we possibly can out of those two games and then together with the board, together with scouting.