In a different season, with a different squad at his disposal, Sir Alex Ferguson would probably have advised Javier Hernández to pack a suitcase and take himself off somewhere hot for a winter holiday. Manchester United's Mexico striker has endured a bit of a lukewarm time of late, prompting suggestions that the 23-year-old could be suffering from "second season syndrome" or might even have been "found out". Rooted in fatigue and physical frailty, the reality is almost certainly rather less dramatic, if no less potentially damaging to United's title hopes.
After a glorious debut season at Old Trafford in which Hernández scored 20 goals in 45 appearances as Ferguson's team won the title and reached the Champions League final last year, the forward known as Chicharito – or Little Pea – headed off to the United States for the Concacaf Gold Cup. On 25 June at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, he was part of the victorious Mexico side that swept the USA aside in the final. Shortly afterwards, Hernández was named player of the tournament in recognition of his finishing top scorer with seven goals.
A three-week holiday followed before he flew to New York to rejoin United for a pre-season tour. It was the second successive year in which he had lacked an extended summer break: 2010, memorably, saw Hernández star for his country in the World Cup in South Africa where Fifa statistics show he was the tournament's quickest player, reaching a lung-sapping top speed of 32.15kmh.
If burn out already beckoned, fortune swiftly played a cruel trick in the form of a debilitating blow to the head. In late July last year, Hernández was training in New Jersey when, straining to make headed contact with a strong, swerving cross, the ball ended up striking him painfully on the back of the skull. By evening a severe headache forced him to swap the team's hotel dinner for bed. Once in his room, Hernández began being violently sick; shortly afterwards he was admitted to hospital with suspected concussion.
Although scans revealed nothing overly serious, a neurological condition that caused the teenage striker severe migraines, and twice floored him after on-pitch clashes of heads in Mexico, dictated that doctors prescribed a complete rest. Accordingly it was almost a month before he returned to training. By then a close season in which Hernández did not participate in a single friendly had passed him by.
Michael Owen, another United striker, has always said that if he is able to fully participate in pre-season he invariably proceeds to enjoy a strong campaign but, if not, a struggle for form and fitness ensues. Sure enough Hernández's autumn was interrupted by, first, another headache-provoking skull injury and then ankle ligament damage.
While his haul of six goals in 22 appearances is not entirely shabby he no longer petrifies defenders in quite the manner of 2010-11. The rapidity of acceleration and surprising spring for a man of only 5ft 9ins may still be there but these days the off-the-ball running is not quite so inventive, the tendency to fall foul of an offside flag more frequent and, most importantly, the finishing not quite as startlingly incisive.
Whereas last season Ferguson almost always started Hernández in the biggest games he has only played the full 90 minutes in the Premier League four times during the current campaign and is expected to be only on the bench at Arsenal on Sunday. From the outside that looks suspiciously like an evaporation of trust; especially as he has been substituted during seven of his 11 starts.
For the moment it is taking Hernández longer to score – on average he registers a goal once every 148 League minutes these days as opposed to once every 114 minutes a year ago. He is also shooting less, converting fewer of his chances and, by way of highlighting a reduced overall involvement in games, completing fewer passes.
Such attacking isolation does not spell lack of effort. Indeed complacency is one of the last things a refreshingly modest and evidently intelligent character who remains a committed Christian can be accused of. Some may argue that a possibly subconscious desire to protect his head has marginally reduced the efficacy of a finisher who, unlike Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, can sometimes struggle to get into matches after stepping off the bench. As one leading manager puts it: "It's only the players with no brains who have no physical fear."
Yet Chicharito's principal problem conceivably lies not so much with himself as a United midfield in which Paul Scholes's recent emergency return from retirement highlights a lack of high-calibre creativity. Ferguson can only trust that a fully fit Little Pea will begin camouflaging such flaws by imposing his own considerable talents on games. Right now it still looks a long way off.
