to be clear, my perspective is that it’s time for Lingard to go. Some fans are far too harsh on his time with us.
whether VDB is a better option...? At the moment he’s not.
Not really, it's not harsh at all. It's just that now he's away, people will like to just remember the good things about him.
Lingard only scored more than 6 goals in a season once for United. Otherwise his numbers otherwise have been ranging from 3 to 5 goals a season. For a player who played on the wings and in attacking midfield, and played a lot of games a season and many times as a regular player, this is beyond dreadful. In all these seasons for us he was ranging 36-42 games a season.
We have barely seen VDB to conclude he's better than Lingard or not. He has played only 13 games in the league with the majority of his minutes ranging from 7 to 23 minutes, two times played 45 minutes and only one time played the full 90 minutes in the league ? On what basis can we even judge him properly ? As meanwhile Lingard has been a useless player for United for his last 1.5 years here.
I'll prefer trying something new in VDB and giving him a proper chance first. We have seen Lingard ton of times across the last several years. We haven't seen VDB much yet. I know what my choice will be.