Ruben Amorin certainly went out with a bang at Sporting CP. After it emerged he was to become the next head coach of Manchester United, the 39-year-old took charge of four more matches at his Portuguese club, all of which were won, and 16 goals were scored.
It's been an awful lot of fun at Sporting this season. That blitz was perhaps their most impressive run of the campaign, given it included a 4-1 win against Manchester City and a 4-2 comeback success at Braga, but they have won 16 and drawn two of their 18 games in all competitions, scoring at least twice in 17 of them.
Only PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands stopped Sporting from scoring multiple goals, and at times, the handbrake has well and truly come off, as it did in Amorim's whirlwind final days. Eight of those 16 goals in four games went to the unstoppable Victor Gyokeres.
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Amorim's next assignment is unlikely to deliver quite so much excitement. United have also played 18 games so far this season, and they have scored twice or more in a game on only seven occasions. One of those came against a League One side, two were at home against Leicester City, and another was at home against PAOK. This is a team that does not score particularly freely.
The challenge for Amorim is to remove the shackles. Having relied on a striker scoring goals for fun at Sporting, he has his work cut out to quickly get Rasmus Hojlund or Joshua Zirkzee to find the net at anything close to that level.
In the long term, Amorim might look to push for a reunion with 26-year-old Gyokeres. In the short-term, he is unlikely to find there is much for United to spend in January.
But one option could present itself in the form of Chelsea forward Christopher Nkunku, a player United considered signing before he completed a move to Stamford Bridge for £52millon in the summer of 2023.
A serious knee injury derailed his first campaign at the club, and Chelsea's rapid pace of change means they have almost moved on from him already. The France international is their top scorer this season, but only one has come in the Premier League. There has been a hat-trick against League Two Barrow and five goals in the Conference League against Servette, Gent, Panathinaikos, and FC Noah.
Nkunku, who turned 27 today, still has plenty of talent. However, his situation at Chelsea and his lack of Premier League game time make a departure in January, perhaps even on loan, a possibility.
That could interest United, and in interim director of recruitment Christopher Vivell, they have a key member of the football leadership team who knows Nkunku well. Vivell was still at RB Salzburg when Nkunku joined RB Leipzig from Paris St-Germain, but soon after, he became technical director at Red Bull's German club and saw Nkunku's rapid development at close hand.
It was the decision of new head coach Jesse Marsch to play Nkunku in a more central role that really saw him flourish, scoring 58 goals in 88 games in his final two seasons at Leipzig.
"With that change of position and change of style, he became the key player and started scoring from the first moment," Vivell told Chelsea's official website in June 2023.
"He was ready for that responsibility and took this next step in a top way. The team believed in him, and he led through his quality. In training you would see it every day. The special thing is that his performances did the talking.
"It is amazing how he developed in his four years in Leipzig, but he needed that time. I describe it like a battery: he was loading, loading, loading and now the battery is full. He’s at the top level."
The battery lost some of its charge during his lengthy injury lay-off, but Nkunku has shown signs of getting his sharpness back this season and Vivell could help convince United to make a move in January.
