G'day Scratchie,

It's normal to have the centre of the propeller or the spinner backplate on the centre line of the fuselage, so yes it looks like your engine would need to go to the left by a small amount. Or to put it another way the hole in the cowl should be on the centreline so therefore the engine drive washer/prop/spinner backplate should be a well. The engine gets mounted off to the left to make that happen.

So the correct thing to do is to move the engine and keep the side thrust.

You probably won't notice if the engine position or angle is slightly out when you fly the model though, unless you are into precision aerobatics, so as close as you can get it will be fine.

Dave H