He was pretty shit, even though he wasn't as bad as he has been this season, not decent, decent is what James is when he is not assisting or scoring. Only the blind and his fan club could not see what a hindrance he was with his lack of quality in such a influential position on the pitch. We could have played with a front 3 of Martial/Rashford/Lukaku but for one reason or another Mourinho always found a way to not use Martial or Rashford, then even Alexis was a better option than him. There was the option of the academy lads that are still overlooked while Lingard finds his way in the starting line up.
Martial has been absolutely terrible on the right every time he's played there, and Lukaku would throw a fit if he had to play there more than the odd game (plus his lack of workrate was an obvious issue). That leaves Rashford who has had the occasional good game on the right but more often than not looks completely lost. I'll grant you that I would have been interested to see that combination occasionally just to see if it did work, but I highly doubt it would have. Alexis? While I personally would have liked to have seen him put on the right for a while when he first got here, he was worse on his preferred left than Lingard was on the right. He was closer to Lingard's form this season, plus he tended to drag every other player down around him.
As for the academy, Greenwood was too young before this season and Chong has struggled to make any impact even this season so would have had it even more difficult a year or two ago. Maybe Gomes could have got some opportunities when we're talking the #10 role, but Ole's not even playing him this season.
As such it was basically Lingard and Mata competing for it. Neither good enough, but most of the time Lingard was the better option of the two.
You only needed to watch him play, and it was very evident that he was and still is a very limited footballer, who shouldn't be playing for Manchester United. Trying to tell us how he was decent and provided something is imo still very far from the actual performances he was putting on show, way before this season.
Absolutely agree, although I do think he
was a decent squad player. He obviously shouldn't have been a starter, but (exactly like Pereira is at the moment) he was better than our other options so got it by default.