I just don’t think the guy is a united player, love his work rate, his heart but he’s almost like a much poorer version of Peter Crouch, looks clumsy, he’s a no brainer stop gap signing as I highly doubt he’ll be here when the new owners come in and he may serve a purpose in taking some of the workload from Martial.
With the five subs rule you need to have three or four players who can change the game from the bench and he can fill one of those roles to the end of the season whilst playing at least 15 more games with how brittle Martial is.
I’d like to think we need 2 elite players in every position and this squad probably still needs;
A true Sweeper Keeper( D Costa), a young quick physical CB(Gvardiol), a young number 6 destroyer (D Rice), An Elite CF (V Oshimen or D Vlahovic) add this to an Amad Dialo return, Sabitzer becoming a full signing and our squad will challenge on all fronts.
This season players are playing for their futures and I think we can safely say already that ETH has probably thought the following need to be sold - A Teles, E Bailey, H Maguire, A Tuanzebe, DVB, P Jones, S Mctominay, B Williams, A Elanga are all surplus to requirements and he’s trying to getting them all playing better or loaned out to raise additional funds in the summer not to reintegrate them into the squad.
He might get £75-100m for all of them and that will probably go towards a new war-chest of £200m from new owners. The elite players we need will cost £270- 300m. Players like Lindelof, Fred, Martial, Sancho will be given the chance to improve which they are doing and become important parts of the squad. I’m excited not by our form but by the brand of football we are trying to play and next season I think we could have two amazing sides from our squad which hopefully look like this ;
First 11- D Costa, D Dalot, R Varane, L Martinez, L Shaw, Casemeiro, Bruno Eriksen or Sancho, Antony or Sancho , * V Osimhen, M Rashford
Alternative 11 - D DE Gea, AWB, V Lindelof, *J Gvardiol, T Mallacia, * D Rice, Fred, Sabitzer, Antony or A Dialo, Martial, A Garnaucho
We Would probably play a midfield 3 of Casemeiro, *Rice and Bruno against some teams but this would be a United squad to truly fear. I say this knowing that all the new players will be incredibly difficult to get and we could have FFP issues so we might only get 2 or 3 of the 5 targets needed.
All I know is that our most important signing has already been made in ETH and for the first time in ages, it feels good to wake up in the morning and be a united fan!