According to ex-goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, Scott McTominay showed Manchester United what they had wrongly discarded last season and his new Napoli team-mate Rasmus Hojlund will follow suit this campaign. The 22-year-old has scored four goals in six games for the Serie A leaders since his summer loan switch, which includes a clause to make the deal permanent. That tally is the same as the number of Premier League goals he managed for United in the previous campaign.

McTominay moved in the same direction 12 months earlier, with his title-winning form in Italy earning the Scotland midfielder Serie A's player of the year award and a Ballon d'Or nomination. Schmeichel, who won five Premier League titles at Old Trafford, remains bewildered by the decision to sell McTominay and questions the wisdom of parting with his fellow Dane Hojlund and replacing him with Benjamin Sesko.

"At United you've got a head coach [Ruben Amorim], then you had a director of football [Dan Ashworth], a technical director or whatever Jason Wilcox's title is, and you've got a head of recruitment [Christopher Vivell], who is very powerful," he told BBC podcast Sacked in the Morning. "You've got a lot of people deciding on who is coming in.

"For instance, the signing of Benjamin Sesko was a little bit weird to me because we have Rasmus Hojlund, who has been starved of service for two years. You only have to see what he's doing at Napoli with Kevin de Bruyne and Scott McTominay to play with - he's scoring goals.

"I've consistently said this for two-and-a-half years - Rasmus Hojlund will be a 25-goal-a-year striker for Manchester United, but he needs service. We let him go on the stats that he scored very little goals last season and bring Sesko in at the time we bring in Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbuemo, who would give Hojlund first-class service.

"You spend £70m-plus on Sesko, when we don't have the number six we should have, and there's the goalkeeping position as well. This season alone we've conceded nine goals from goalkeeping errors. When I played, when Edwin van der Sar played, when David de Gea played, the brief was win 10 points a season, you don't give points away.

"Why did we bring someone in that we didn't need? Because the head of recruitment comes from Leipzig [also Sesko's former club] and he's got to make a mark. When I played, the manager [Sir Alex Ferguson] was in charge. He said 'him in and him out'. Now it's different people with different agendas that decide. How can you create a stable environment to have a football team that can go out and win every game?"

McTominay scored 13 goals and provided six assists in his debut campaign at Napoli, having been with United since primary school. He has one goal and one assist so far this season.

"What's he doing at Napoli?" said Schmeichel, who also won three FA Cups and a Champions League at Old Trafford. "He is so Manchester United. The problem was his versatility, because you have players who can only play in one position. Managers didn't trust him to build the team around. They want the neat players. He was the victim of that time and again.

"Phil Neville was a little bit the same. He never really got a starting XI spot, but he played an awful lot of games because he could play different roles. I don't get why those two are at Napoli. You will get no-one with more enthusiasm for Manchester United than Rasmus Hojlund. He was writing about playing for the club when he was 10 years old. He's a massive fan. And the fans love him because he was working so hard for the team and he never complained."