I'm really struggling to be onboard with the refusal to sell Garnacho. I find it fascinating that a large portion of our fan base is struggling to see that their blind love for players is one of the largest factors in our demise as a club currently. It's like none of you learn from constantly getting your fingers burned with players, especially in the 'post Fergie era'. This constant blind faith/hope is what has led this club into the position we're in now, obviously mixed with horrendous owners and people like Ed Woodward handing out hundreds of thousands per week like it's peanuts.
Look at what your loyalty to players has done to this club over the past decade. The same player that received your (our, I am not in this camp personally, I see players for what they are. I do not wear red tinted glasses for the sake of it) love and admiration only 7-8 years ago, is now playing for a club in the Midlands, on £325k p/w and has been nothing short of atrocious for the past 2.5 years, basically since his purple patch in 22/23. What did your loyalty to this player achieve? Please I need to know. If we'd have sold him off the back of his purple patch at the end of 22/23, we'd have probably received offers north of £60/70m, quite easily, but we didn't. We instead made him one of the highest earners at the club, again,
OFF THE BACK OF A PURPLE PATCH and he then returned true to his real form and stunk the place out. Now we're here.
There are other names that can be added to this to; Jesse, Martial, Pogba (kind of), Shaw. These players were given all of the loyalty from the fans and what did they/have they done in return? Shaw has unfortunate injuries but my god he should've been sold a while back. He is NEVER fit. Only now is a majority of the fan base onboard with selling him, but it's almost too late now.
You're allowing yourselves to get your fingers burned again if you do it with Garnacho. Garnacho is NOT the player you think he is, or who he thinks he is. The eye test proves it and so do the numbers. He's made 80 PL apps so far and his numbers are not great by any means. If we are offered £60m+ for him in the Summer, he has to go. We would be morons to turn it down. There are better players than Garnacho out there, for cheaper too. Charles De Ketelaere is one of them.
From my own perspective, I've never really been on the Garnacho bandwagon as much as some other fans have, and I just mean that from a general point of view. I've not overrated him, I've seen him for what he is, a young winger from the academy that was promoted to the squad due to depth in that position being dreadful (Rashford & Antony).
Garn is not what he himself thinks he is I'm afraid, it's as simple as that. He can wear the CR7 boxers, have the flashy hair and do the suii, it all means jack when anyone with even a slither of football knowledge can see that he has the football IQ of a Pub League player, and that isn't an exaggeration either. As someone that has watched every game so far this year, and for years prior, he really hasn't been overwhelmingly amazing at all. His decision making has improved since Ruben arrived and he was dropped etc, but prior to that he honestly struggled to get the basics right, it was quite spectacular to watch actually.
A few months ago he was approached outside OT by a fan who criticised him for not passing the ball more often and questioned his decisions etc. Of course this is not what a fan should be doing to a player before a match, but he was voicing the opinions of the fans that watch football with their eyes and not with their red tinted glasses.
At one point this season, a specific page on social media reported on him with the following headline..
None of the players above (I'll list below) have more goals + assists this season than Alejandro Garnacho - 11/11/2024
Players listed:
- Saka
- Dembele
- Kvara
- Mbappe
- Leao
- Nico Williams
- Olise
- Foden
The headline was of course clever with their wording, because Saka had the exact same stats as him, and 4 of the others had FAR less minutes than him with their stats not being that far away from Garn's at all.
At this stage of the season, Garna had the most shots attempted, dribbles attempted, worst passing distance and worst passes attempted out of that entire list. So he had taken the most shots with a poor conversion rate, had passed the least with the least passes attempted and had an absolutely shocking dribbles attempted to complete ratio, but that wasn't reported by said page, only his G+A. Poor reporting, poor analysis and it quite frankly gets the moronic fans on his side with no context.
Regarding his dribbles completed, at this point in the season he had attempted 30 dribble take ons in all comps and was successful a grand whopping of SIX (6) times. 70% of those occasions he failed miserably. That was the worst ratio by a country mile out of all of those players listed. Again, if you are a proper fan of the club though, you don't need the stats and/or data to tell you this, the eye test was enough, because he was doing it week in week out with little to no success. For all of us United fans, think of the Chelsea game in November, this one sticks with me as we could've put that game to bed if Garn had even a slither of football intelligence.
Overall, Garn is not the player that he thinks he is, and he's not the player that your average fan thinks he is either. He's a somewhat freshly promoted academy prospect that has some promising qualities but also carries some damning negative traits too, which balances him out. There will be fans that might respond to this post and claim that I'm being harsh or unfair. If you truly think this then you're one of the problems with this club. Ruben has dropped him and the board are clearly interested in listening to offers for him, if you think you know better then that's fine, but I'm here to tell you that you don't. If an offer was to come in at the right asking price (£70m currently) then we would be completely insane to not accept it. We could layer the contract with insane sell on clauses / buy back clauses etc to sweeten the deal if he all of a sudden turns into who HE thinks he is, but at this moment in time selling him would be a good decision from the board.
