Does anyone have any concerns about him or his agents?
- I’ve seen him have a few dud performances.
- He’s already played for Watford, Man City & Dortmund while he was still a teenager and is potentially looking to move again.
Not saying I don’t want him, I would be excited to see him in red. Solskjaer wouldn’t want him if he had a bad attitude. But I also wouldn’t be too disheartened if we took a punt on someone else.
Going from Watford to City is fairly normal for a youth player. Plenty of youth players make the jump to a bigger club at around the ages of 14-16. For example, Morgan Rogers just made the jump from West Brom to City, Harvey Elliot just made the jump from Fulham to Liverpool. If you look back at United youth players these are the players that made the jump to United at around age 16: Mejbri, Pogba, Januzaj, Hoogewerf, Mejia, Puigmal, Fosu Mensah, Chong, Jurado, Emeran, etc... Without counting there are probably 40 players in the past 10 years.
City offered a better footballing education with better resources in better competitions.
Sancho's jump to Dortmund was also normal for someone looking to get gametime. Dortmund obviously are more willing to play younger players compared to City no matter how talented they are. City have never had 2 youth players of the caliber of Sancho and Foden, yet have now proven they won't give them the playing time their talent warrants. So not a problem at all.
On the other hand, look at Martial. Made the jump from Lyon to Monaco. Then after playing first team football with Monaco, made the jump to United at age 19/20. So very similar to Sancho.
I'm concerned he'll flop or at the very least struggle to adjust right away. He's potentially coming into a more competitive league with more demands, I think it will take him a while to get on the same page as some of our players when he initially arrives.
My biggest concern is that this goes the way of Sanchez and the price tag/wages weigh him down.
Honestly not bothered about this. He's only just turned 20, so this past season was only his age 19 season while his upcoming season is going to be his age 20 season.
For reference, Zaha made the jump to United at age 20 and turned 21 in November of that season. So he was slightly older than Sancho in his last season for Palace in the Championship while putting up 8 goals and 12 assists in 4300 minutes. Sancho put up 20 goals and 20 assists in 3300 minutes in a superior league in 1000 less minutes.
I'm not expecting him to have the same production in the PL, but I'm fine with it because he has the potential to eventually be putting up those kind of numbers in his prime. Just compare what Sane did in the Bundesliga or Hazard did at the same age. Sancho is at an age where he'll start to make jumps in dribbling production (disrupting defenses).
