There’s 2 different categories, as many have mentioned.
There are players that looked like they shouldn’t be here at all but now don’t look out of place in the team anymore and can be relied upon at least until we get a top upgrade. Dalot and post-World Cup Wan-Bissaka are the best examples of such improvement (as well as De Gea — to a point — and Fred, who started to put out great performances that he was always capable of, on a more consistent basis). I’d go with Dalot on this one even though his injury derailed his progress a bit — he looks like a proper modern fullback now and we even saw him getting preferred to Cancelo for the national team, which means that he didn’t simply started to look better in a more tactically astute side.
And then you have players who stepped up to match the likes of Casemiro & Lisandro as our leaders, most notably Rashford and Shaw. Shaw surprised me a little less — he already had a spell in his career when he was genuinely world class but it’s nice to see him performing at that level again and he looks like he also became more vocal on & off the pitch. Rashford’s improvement has been insane though — it’s still a short enough spell so that we can’t yet dismiss a possibility of a purple patch, but if he keeps it up long enough he’ll genuinely be competing for Ballon d’Or (to be fair it’s gonna become a bit easier when Messi will follow Cristiano into semi-retirement). Before that I thought that his ceiling was as one of 3-5 best forwards in the league.
So yeah, Dalot & Rashford seem to be standouts but since it’s harder to get from good to one of the best in the world than it is to improve from poor to good, I’d go with the latter.
There are players that looked like they shouldn’t be here at all but now don’t look out of place in the team anymore and can be relied upon at least until we get a top upgrade. Dalot and post-World Cup Wan-Bissaka are the best examples of such improvement (as well as De Gea — to a point — and Fred, who started to put out great performances that he was always capable of, on a more consistent basis). I’d go with Dalot on this one even though his injury derailed his progress a bit — he looks like a proper modern fullback now and we even saw him getting preferred to Cancelo for the national team, which means that he didn’t simply started to look better in a more tactically astute side.
And then you have players who stepped up to match the likes of Casemiro & Lisandro as our leaders, most notably Rashford and Shaw. Shaw surprised me a little less — he already had a spell in his career when he was genuinely world class but it’s nice to see him performing at that level again and he looks like he also became more vocal on & off the pitch. Rashford’s improvement has been insane though — it’s still a short enough spell so that we can’t yet dismiss a possibility of a purple patch, but if he keeps it up long enough he’ll genuinely be competing for Ballon d’Or (to be fair it’s gonna become a bit easier when Messi will follow Cristiano into semi-retirement). Before that I thought that his ceiling was as one of 3-5 best forwards in the league.
So yeah, Dalot & Rashford seem to be standouts but since it’s harder to get from good to one of the best in the world than it is to improve from poor to good, I’d go with the latter.
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