Of all the players to jump on board to defend...why Sancho?! He's shown nothing playing for us, cost us a fortune and taken the piss while doing it.
After a while of reading, though, I was honestly beginning to wonder if this is a post from someone hired by Sancho’s management to create a user account on Utd’s biggest online forum to try to turn the PRdisaster tide.
In the end, though, I concluded that only Sancho himself would be able to come up with the ‘egotistical fraud’-line and not censor it out.
OK - allow me to explain why I am pro-Sancho in this drama.
First of all, I didn’t fully agree with us signing Sancho in the first place. I do think he’s a special player, stylistically similar to Neymar and Grealish albeit not as good. I like his composure, his eye for pass and his close control. But my two objections were as follows:
1. He is better as a left-winger and this is also Rashford’s best position. I don’t think it was a good idea to have two of the best young English talents - at the time - worth close to £80 million - competing for the same spot.
2. He is like Joao Felix in that his skillset is best served to a possession-based system where he has options and runners moving around him where he can connect the play. It was stylistically a mismatch for us given that we were, at the time, building around Bruno, who is better in a transition / counter-attack model where he is free to ping balls into space. Sancho can chase those balls, but he is not blessed with great speed.
Nonetheless, Sancho still has his uses. In the low-blocks that we used to come up against he had potential to shine in tight spaces. He offered an alternative to Rashford, who is a head-down winger that just runs at defenders and tries to cut inside and shoot. Furthermore, Sancho’s composure and eye for a pass is also extremely useful in transitions as his decision-making is generally spotless. For example, you can see how he dominated against Chelsea at home last season.
Either way, I would not have objected to Ten Hag putting him up for sale in the summer. It would have been the best move for both parties. He would go to a team more suited to his strengths, whereas we could replace him with a faster and more direct winger suited to the transitions that Ten Hag wants. But this ultimately never happened.
Ten Hag gave Sancho a go in the false 9 in pre-season but not when the season started. This raised my eyebrow. I thought Sancho in the false 9 could work well. It suits his strengths more. He can drop deep, combine with players, make more use of his close control, it wouldn’t expose him to a 1-on-1 situations outwide where he can get outpaced by fullbacks and he would also put his eye for pass to great use if we get play through balls in behind to Rashford. Yet when the season started, Sancho was given sub-appearances off the bench on left-wing.
But this alone wasn’t enough to make me turn on Ten Hag. It was the sheer fact that he called him out in the press conference and questioned his professionalism. That was a low blow and totally unnecessary. It was a cowardly move. He did it to a squad player in a crisis of confidence, kicking him when he is already down. He disrespected the club by tumbling the value of a club asset that we may, in the future, need to recoup. Who the hell would drop even £30m on a player who’s manager has called him out for being a bad professional? The incident was also bad for the prestige of the club. We’re supposed to be, literally, united. Us vs. the world. And here you have a manager publicly criticising his player, which is something that similiarly annoyed me about Jose and LvG.
The incident also made me realise that Ten Hag is too small for this club. This innocuous throwaway comment created a scandal. He should have foreseen that backing Sancho into a corner like this would have ramifications.
Moreover, when the playing staff, a crucial stakeholder for our success, see one of their own get criticised in public, it makes them lose respect for the manager as they wonder if they will be next in line for this sort of public humiliation.
On top of all of this, Ten Hag or the club showed their really nasty side with briefings attacking his character. This is a player with a history of mental health issues lest we forget. And then banishing Sancho to the extent that he can’t even go to the canteen? This was when I realise that Ten Hag simply does not have the character or personality for a club of this magnitude. You cannot simply come to United and throw your weight around like it is your personal little dictatorship, especially not when you have done so little in the game.
The whole situation was totally avoidable. Even if it was the case that Sancho wasn’t training right, there was no need to throw him under the bus. The negatives consequences of that - financially, squad morale and ethically - far outweighed the postives. The only positive for Ten Hag here is the total humiliation of Sancho, which has not earned him respect from the players, but rather disdain.
It was horrible judgement from Ten Hag, who behaved as though he is bigger than the club. The decision to call out Sancho and subsequently banish him has backfired in every way. Whether Sancho is still here or not, I’m not really bothered. But the whole incident proves why Ten Hag does not have the personality to manage this club and his ego will continue to hold us back unless he is removed.
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