Because he doesn’t deserve it. Anyone who has watched him play can see that he contributes very little in attack and defence whenever he has played for us. Antony hasn’t been great but his workrate alone make this comparison meaningless.
Sancho just doesn’t deserve any chance based on his performance. And his attitude while training meant that he didn’t deserve any minutes in first team
From a tactical perspective, every bad United attacking performance this season is vindicating Sancho, regardless of attitude, simply due to his playing style and the fact that nobody but injury prone Amad and Martial can replicate it.
The chemistry betweeen Rashford and Hojlund is poor because both prefer to play on the shoulder of the last defender. This means that one of them will always have to be the supporting attack: which involves dropping deep, connecting the midfield to the attack, playing between the lines and be creative. This is unnatural for both of them, while being natural for Sancho. Moreover, for Rashford and Hojlund to be at their best, they need a player who specialises in those aforementioned supporting act duties. Therefore, by playing them together, Ten Hag is exposing their weaknesses and hiding their strengths.
Garnacho has also been a victim of this. The stinkers he dropped at the start of the season were because Rashford was the number 9, when Garnacho needs a forward that takes the creative burden off him and drags defenders out of position to create space for him to run in behind.
With Hojlund, Garnacho and Rashford all not performing to their best ability, the solution for getting the best out of them lies in the three forwards in our squad who can play with their head up and a predominantly geared towards recieving the ball to feet and creating space for the speedy players to exploit. These are: Amad (injured), Martial (injury prone) and… Sancho.
Ten Hag overplayed his hand with the Sancho issue and underestimated the importance of a player with Sancho’s traits. This itself was bizarre because Sancho had a very good pre-season in the false 9 role. Sancho has the profile necessary to bring the best out of all of our speed merchant forwards (Pellistri, Rashford, Hojlund and Garnacho). Yet he has not even been given an opportunity this season. Perhaps Ten Hag may have felt it was necessary to make an example of Sancho. But with every game, you see how disjointed our attack looks.
Rashford, Hojlund, Garnacho and Pellistri’s natural instincts are all too similar for them to work well together. They are head-down and direct players who are not very creative and work best with players who play with their head-up and come to recieve the ball to feet in order to create space for them to run in behind.
For now, most of the fans blame individual forwards for being out of form. The tactical reality is that their profiles do not compliment each-other. Whether the fans realise this or not does not matter. Game by game, the lack of opportunities created will speak for themselves and unless rectified, they should cost Ten Hag his job.
Perhaps Ten Hag will bring back Sancho - sans apology - in desperation. Even in the event of an improvement with regards to our attacking structure and chance creation, the dressing room and the fans are certain to lose all respect for him and it will clear that the risk he took in both publicly humiliating Sancho and subsequently banishing him was a case of overplaying his hand severely and it backfiring horribly.
