MadDogg
Full Member
His lack of involvement has been an issue throughout his entire career. He's always got on the ball, passed the ball, made himself available to receive the ball, etc, significantly less than all our other midfielders. Bar the odd period here and there, playing Scott in midfield has always placed an unfair amount of pressure on his partner to do...well, basically everything themselves. Fred most obviously, where he was somehow having to be our main presser, main ball-winner and the main deeper playmaker and creative passer all at the same time (the latter of which he obviously wasn't good enough but had to do it as he was still much better than McTominay).Yeah, at the end of the day he probably wasn't good enough and we got rid of him for a good fee, but he was never as bad as most United fans wanted you to believe. The reversal to this fawning doey eyed well wishing now he's gone is remarkable.
I also do think he got a lot of stick for being a good club man and trying to do what's asked of him. @Pogue Mahone and @Beachryan point out his lack of involvement under ten Hag, but the truth is every player that has played next to Casemiro has really struggled to get involved in games. Sabitzer was equally ethereal, and Mainoo is, for all his quality, not influencing games as much as he could be. Eriksen has the best numbers here from his first season, but we were also setting up a bit differently then.
All of that is to say, that ten Hag's suicide midfield doesn't really get the best out of anyone and the lack of involvement of his 8 in general play does seem to be a feature not a bug. McTominay has never been great at this, but I don't think he should be completely tarred with ten Hag's shitty brush.
It did become worse under ETH, but Scott being weak at all the most important aspects you want in a midfielder has always been an issue. Our even bigger problem was that for long periods of time all our other options were even worse, so despite his limitations he was rightfully in the starting line-up at the time. I've generally never had a problem with managers picking him on a game-to-game basis because of that, but more that we never focused enough on bringing in the right players that we needed instead.
Scott does have his strengths and they are great bonuses to have for a midfielder, but the key word there is 'bonuses'. They can't be the only thing that he is good at while being average or worse at the basics, which unfortunately is how it's normally been.