Regarding the Luis Diaz example. You do realise that it's harder to continuously commit two (or even three) defenders on one guy when the guys next to him are Robertson, Mané, and Salah as opposed to the threat of the guys surrounding Sancho on the pitch?
In order to avoid him being doubled up on (and he's going to be as long as we keep playing left backs who are too lazy to overlap and offer options) we need to get more quality around him. No player in the world can successfully dribble his way out of a double or triple marking job, and even less a player that never was an explosive dribbler.
While a younger Cristiano was better equipped to deal with that type of attention due to his attributes (and being one of the two best players to ever play the game which is a high bar to set for Sancho), he also had the help of having Evra constantly bombing up the left wing and Rooney/Tevez/Saha occupying defenders with their movement in and around the box.
No team is just going to sit there and "give" him space. Space is created and earned by off-the-ball movement and relies on having players willing to make a run even if it doesn't end up with them getting the ball every time, and we simply do not have that. If Shaw isn't getting on the end of a through ball then he just doesn't bother overlapping and just sits 20 yards behind Sancho waiting for him to do something with the ball. Telles was guilty of that too last night on a couple occasions, even if he's more willing to go forward and ahead of Sancho.
All I hear here are excuses for a player who has been bang average throughout the majority of the season..'' It's the fullbacks not helping him in one game'', ''the players around him are not good enough''. ''The tactics don't play to his strengths'. We ''need a new manager for him'' ''he plays better on the left....no no his best position is on the right ''
When you have to produce so many excuses for a player, alarm bells should start ringing. We did this before with Maguire, ''oh we need a better pacy CB beside him and he'll thrive etc. We've done it with Martial, we done it with rashford we done it with Pogba. Oh they need better players around them bs excuse. If a player is good enough, they will shine through in spite of the players around them.
Now Sancho needs world class full backs, word class forwards and world class midfielders for him to shine.
Sancho was so bad in his first 7 appearances that Ole had no choice but to bench his behind.
You talk about Liverpool threats, Do you think teams don't have to worry about marking Ronaldo, Bruno or Elanga? Are these players not considered threats?
Let me ask you out of the 24 games Sancho has played this seaason, how many times do you think he's been triple marked?
And how many times has our full backs failed to help him change his nappies?
Because for me, 3 goals and 3 assists in the whole entire campaign in all competitions is a pathetic return for a 75 million player.
I don't expect him to dribble past 5-7 players on his own, I expect him to be a consistent threat, i.e get into dangerous positions on the pitch, score goals and make assists, I don't care how he does it. For 75million What I don't expect when we spunk our entire budget on one player is to hear a bunch of excuses. Elanga who is 19 years old is showing more promise and proviiding us with more of threat and has scored just as many goals as this guy. Elanga was unlucky not to score against Athletico if not for a lucky save from Oblak. He also turned up in Madrid and bailed us out, something Sancho failed to do, instead went missing. That's what I expect from a top class player. I don't see elanga needing excuses being made for him, because he gets on with it and delivers.
Sancho hasn't been unlucky he's just been bang average save for a few decent games against shoddy defences.
If Elanga was English, my god this boy would be classed as a world beater by now by our fans and the media, because I rate him better than this guy who has shown so far that he's all hype without any substance.