After his time at Birmingham, the club should have insisted Hannibal go back to the Championship. This whole Sevilla spell has been an absolute disaster.
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After his time at Birmingham, the club should have insisted Hannibal go back to the Championship. This whole Sevilla spell has been an absolute disaster.
Sounds like another case of a Manchester United player thinking they are better than they actually are, in all honesty.
Seems like ETH doesnt fancy him(or Amad), and seems unlucky with his loans.
Just saw Real are currently playing Sevilla so thought I'd check how Mejbri is doing and he's starting on the bench, with 37 minutes accumulated on the pitch since he's been there.
Starts for Sevilla today, could be right side of a midfield three. Sevilla 2 up against Real Sociedad.
Please keep updating…
It’s half time and he’s currently 2nd best rated with Sergio Ramos at 4.5 behind the 2 goal striker Nesyri who’s at 4.8
Hopes this means more game time. Their fans have been desperate for him to start.
At half time, 3rd highest rated player in the game behind the guy who scored a brace and Ramos.
Sociedad have pulled one back though
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Has he been booked?
Eek - just saw this!
Been subbed off now - around the 60th minute mark (actually 53rd). Unsure why but perhaps they're going for experience to try and close the game out. Suso replaced him
How did he play? I was surprised to see him starting after all of the bad press.
Looks like he's not in the squad today. I wonder what's happening.
If he’s not injured then I’m baffled as to why we haven’t recalled him. Makes no sense letting him rot out there rather than struggle to make the squad here.
A terrible loan of the highest order - warning signs were there from the off. What an absolute waste
89 minutes in La Liga so far this season.
129 minutes in the PL before he went on loan.
Safe to say he hasn’t taken Spain by storm.
129 minutes in the PL before he went on loan.
Safe to say he hasn’t taken Spain by storm.
Very frustrating.
I know it's difficult to confidently predict which of the talented youngsters will kick on in senior football the most, but definitely thought Hannibal had more than enough about his game to be farther down the line than he is at club level.
He's had one of those wasted seasons that a number of our youngsters do when they're bridging that gap between U21's and unsuccessful loans. If we're keeping ETH, and he's not going to pick him, then he needs to try to get a good permanent move where he can look to get game time. But I think there's still a good talent there - maybe not Mainoo level, but higher than Forson and close to Amad - so if we are thinking of changing manager then I'd like us to wait to see if he's in that managers plans before thinking of selling him.
In modern day football, it's very unlikely that a kid with anything less than a professional attitude & temperament makes it. Hannibal seems to have taken Sevilla for granted.
His temperament was a big question mark when he was still at United too. More on the pitch then off it but still...
Given our injury situation, he may well have got more minutes if he'd stayed
Loan him to a Scottish side next season so he can learn to pull his head in.
I was watching him when he was at Birmingham, arguably his best spell, and he still looked like a headless chicken. Very poor positional awareness for a midfield player. Just chasing after the ball and fouling people. Hasn't developed as well as everyone thought he would, at all.
Had a falling out with his team and manager the first week because he laughed (stupidly) at someone's poor control of a pass and promptly got frozen out. We should have pulled the plug straightaway - unless this is all part of the 'education'.
Question would be was Birmingham the right team for him to develop a sound positional game then? If anything they probably encouraged that sort of play with their direct football.
Sevilla seemed like a terrible choice from the off. Teams in trouble tend to favour experience
Yeah I watched a few games at the youth level and he was the most fouled player on the pitch. His ball carrying was great and all action running is easy to get behind and support. Thought he'd make it but once he got into the first team it was clear how different PL football is. You don't get any time on the ball and running will only get you so much if you're physically weak and the opponent can just ignore you.
Such a shame he looks like he won't make it. He must see what Mainoo does and believe he is capable of similarly breaking into the squad at least. He could save us one transfer, and if he gets the right coach he still might, but I think his time is done at United sadly.
The only reason Mainoo has broken into the squad is his brain and composure.
I can't believe that Hannibal has it to make it now in any top team. He just seems a better technical player than Chong, but more aggressive as well, which can be costly.
Yeah, I had very high hopes but I think he'll move on now. At his age, he needs regular games and can't see him getting that here next season after such a wasted year.
But I still think there's the potential there of a (very) good player and would not in the least be surprised to see him be one of our many Academy players who ends up playing in the PL or major top flight elsewhere. There's an awful lot more to him than the kinds who drop to the lower tiers / non-league. Hannibal has all the (raw) ingredients to be a top flight player. Hopefully he'll find a club that will help him put all those ingredients together and reach his potential.
He's simply not that good. He didn't live up to the hype from when he was 15/16. We paid Monaco a lot of money to sign him.
He turned 21 in January. It's best that he leaves and finds a club where he can get regular games. Gomes and Garner did the same.
Hannibal was treated badly by ten Hag this season though. He scored off the bench vs Brighton at home and then did fairly well in the next game (Burnley), which he started.
But was rarely seen again after those 2 games.Just 15 PL mins before his loan to Sevilla. That's been a disaster.
If he was as good as the hype, there's no way that France would have let him opt for Tunisia. Even they don't rate him that highly. He's missed their last 9 internationals and has only assisted 1 goal from 27 caps. Some of those caps were against weak opposition.
Going to the Sevilla game tonight, I take it there's no chance he'll play?
He's only featured in 1 of their last 8 games. He got 8 mins off the bench.
Sevilla have been decent the past 2 months or so. 17 points taken from their last 9 games (27 points).
Cádiz are battling relegation, so will be up for it.
The flip side of some of those points is that he already has 27 intternational caps for a strong African nation at the age of just 21, which is pretty good going.
And his loans are at championship / La Liga level. Compared to some of our other U21's who are on loan in lower leagues / non-league. That highlights the expected level that he can reach.
I think you make good comparisons with the likes of Garner and Gomes. And others like Drinkwater, Mengi, Chong, etc. It looks like he might not make it here, but I definitely think he has the ability to match those and play at PL / major top flight level.
Tunisia aren't that strong. They don't have many players playing at a high level.
I don't think anyone doubts that. But there's a difference between playing for Man Utd and a lower PL club. Andreas Pereira has carved out a good career at Fulham since leaving. I think Hannibal can do something similar.
He's unlikely become a world class midfielder, which would have been the hope when he was 16. There are players his age and younger making an impact at other big clubs.
Compare him with Pedri, Camavinga, Musiala, Simmons, Musiala, Bellingham, Pavlović, Gavi, Zaïre-Emery, etc.
All fair points, yeah.
But in terms of whether we keep Hannibal or not, how many of the calibre of those listed in the last paragraph are we going to be signing in the foreseeable future? Our levels have dropped as well. So, yeah, while Hannibal hasn't kicked on to the level that we hoped, when discussing his chances here the short term alternatives are more McTominay, Barkley level rather than Pedri or Bellingham.
I'm more responding to people who just dismiss him as 'he just isn't very good'. Whereas I'm of the opinion that even if he doesn't make it here, he is definitely good enough to emulate the likes of Gomes, Garner, Pereira. All of whom are doing well and I certainly wouldn't dismiss as 'just not very good'. Even if they're 'just not quite good enough' to make it at the biggest clubs in the world, that's still a long way from being dismissed as not being good.
I guess it's just the extremes of 'you're either a world beater or garbage' type attitudes that I see and don't agree with. I don't see a problem with us producing some more than useful squad player type levels. But if they don't look like they're going to be world class, some seem to dismiss them as 'not good enough, get rid'. As if every senior signing we make is world class!
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We all want youngsters to turn world class, but it was always very obvious Hannibal would be compared more to the likes of Tom Cleverley rather than any of the mentioned players. It's fine if we develop players that turn out to be part of the squad and not exactly first XI material. But Hannibal was never a candidate for that, I don't even know how he made it to this point and my feeling was always Sevilla is too high level for him.
I think he will turn out to be a very good player and we will rue not aiding his development
There's more talk about his ability than his state of mind and common sense in these discussions, but I think there's something fundamentally wrong with how he goes out there and plays like he's lost his marbles most of the time, to the point coaches won't trust him and his likelihood of being earmarked as a liability because of that is nearly always through the roof.
I championed him as a player for quite some time, but I think it's a redundancy to consider him from that angle until he proves he can play a run of competitive games without looking like a sure thing to be sent off.
There's a line with aggression, and he doesn't seem to process where that is. Hot heads and short fusers when they were younger, fix that and he hasn't.
He'll end up playing levels below where he might have if he doesn't.
He played a fair few games on loan at Birmingham and didn't get sent off. I believe his aggression is something that we could do with.
Perhaps he's just not very good?
That's the most likely outcome for any youth product even the hyped ones. We just have to manage them properly to see how high a level they can reach, in this case it's just been a terrible loan decision so wasted time.
I'd keep him with us next season and use him to fill the squad out. If he doesn't make the most of his minutes then sell him.
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