It was, Hull City manager Sergej Jakirovic said, as easy and relaxing for his goalkeeper as drinking a cup of afternoon tea. Of all the analysis of the lack of threat posed by the updated Manchester United side as they stumbled into the new season with a defeat on Humberside, it was the most damning assessment of all.In a 2-0 loss at the home of a promoted team widely tipped to go straight back down, Michael Carrick’s team were outmuscled in defence, overrun in midfield and as meek as mewling kittens in attack. It was the equivalent of ‘can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field’ on a football pitch.It is way too early to make sweeping predictions about where United will finish this season but there was widespread and understandable dismay about the level of the performance, and worrying signs of an apparent failure to build on the progress that Carrick made with the team last season.United had momentum on their side in May. They finished third. They were back in the Champions League. With Pep Guardiola leaving Manchester City, it was predicted that they would be Arsenal’s closest challengers this season. Instead, there has been a creeping feeling throughout the summer that momentum has been lost.There has been a feeling that, yet again, the manager of the football club has been let down by the crowded hierarchy above him in the food chain. United had a rare chance to build from a position of relative strength this summer and the mood music already suggests that they blew it. Michael Carrick can only watch as his Manchester United team are taken apart by promoted club Hull City on Saturday A side that cannot move on from Harry Maguire, who is 33, is a side with issuesIf it is not yet another false dawn, then it is a missed opportunity. The summer was a time for United to make an impression. Instead, it feels as if they have stood still. Youri Tielemans is a fine player but he is not the midfielder who will make the difference between third place and champions.Are either he or new arrival Carlos Baleba an improvement on Casemiro, who has departed for Major League Soccer? Baleba, who is set to sign from Brighton for around £70million, is a player of rich potential who should bring energy and bite but his progress stalled on the south coast last season.His last-minute acquisition suggests either confused planning or thwarted ambitions elsewhere. So does the failure to strengthen a defence that was twice undone by set-pieces at the MKM Stadium and looks like a weirdly debilitating mixture of creakiness and naivety. A side that cannot move on from Harry Maguire, who is 33, is a side with issues.When the big players moved this summer, United missed out. Elliot Anderson went to Manchester City, Morgan Rogers went to Chelsea, Bruno Guimaraes went to Arsenal, Anthony Gordon went to Barcelona, Marc Cucurella went to Real Madrid and Sandro Tonali went to Spurs.It is hard to shake the idea that United have been left behind. Or at least caught dawdling on the start line. This was the summer they could least afford that to happen. They had a good summer last year when they overhauled their attack with a clutch of good signings but so far, this has been an underwhelming window. They have been feeding off scraps.It has refocused attention on minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his lieutenants, Omar Berrada and Jason Wilcox, and a transfer policy that is starting to look flawed. They fixed the roof last summer and now they’re trying to install a new kitchen. But the foundations are built on shifting sands and they have ignored those completely.After another tumultuous campaign last season, when Ruben Amorim was fired and Carrick performed such a fine rescue job, this was the summer when he should have been backed to the hilt and United should have shown the faith in him that his achievements in his four months in charge demanded.Instead, it feels as if that support has been muted. The acquisition of Baleba is a step forward and United are now being strongly linked with Barcelona’s 22-year-old Spanish left back Alejandro Balde, but they are shopping at John Lewis, not Harrods. It is hard to shake the feeling of anti-climax. Youri Tielemans is a fine player but he is not the midfielder who will make the difference between third place and champions United’s summer signings, including Andrey Santos (right), feel underwhelming, as if the club is feeding off scraps ‘Come on, that’s ridiculous,’ Carrick said to former Middlesbrough and Swindon Town forward Jan Aage Fjortoft when Fjortoft, who is now an accomplished presenter for Viaplay, suggested that United had lacked Hull’s passion in the first half of the game on Saturday and conceded two goals before the interval.It was rare to see Carrick bite like that. It did not feel like a loss of composure but more like a glimpse, ironically, of the passion that runs through him. He was right to stand behind his players, too: an away game at a newly promoted side in front of dedicated fans, hungry for a defrocking, has been the undoing of many an aristocrat.United do not lack passion. But what is more worrying for Carrick is that they lack quality. They lacked the quality to withstand what Hull threw at them and they lacked the quality to offer more than the occasional threat to the newcomers’ defence. Konstantinos Tzolakis, the goalkeeper his manager referenced, supped on tea, not sympathy.A beautiful tribute to King Kev It has been, in many ways, an unnerving summer for the fans of Newcastle United. Liverpool supporters, too, are not quite sure what to expect after the arrival of a new manager to try to repair the disappointments of last season. But all those concerns and even the result itself, a fittingly exciting 2-2 draw, were secondary to the tribute that the supporters of both teams provided for Kevin Keegan at St James’ Park on Sunday afternoon. Keegan, who died last month, was one of the great figures of English football, a European Cup winner for Liverpool and a transformative character, both as player and manager, for Newcastle. He was adored in both cities and by both sets of fans.And the joint farewell that the clubs gave him, both as a spectacle and in song, at their game was a beautiful and moving show of dignity and devotion to a man who brought so much joy to so many. Keegan represented much that was the best of our game and so did the tribute to him. St James’ Park nailed the tremendous and emotional tribute to Kevin Keegan on Sunday Time running out for Wirtz I want Florian Wirtz to succeed at Liverpool because I saw enough of him before his arrival in the Premier League to know that he is a sublime player. Liverpool supporters did not see enough of that player last season, though, and he made an underwhelming start to the new season at Newcastle on Sunday. Wirtz deserved the patience that was extended to him last season. He would not be the first player to struggle with the pace and the demands of English football. But time is running out for the £115million man to show what he can do.