Man United have at last grown bored of indulging spoilt brats such as Alejandro Garnacho. It's a sign of progress, writes OLIVER HOLT
The search for an image that captures the mood of a football age where more and more players live gilded lives detached from reality, bloated by wealth, swollen by entitlement and divorced from responsibility to their club and their fans, is over.
Alejandro Garnacho, the Manchester United winger who is already a legend in his own mind, fixed that for us when he posed in an Aston Villa shirt in front of a yellow Ferrari and a black Lamborghini while he is on holiday in Ibiza and posted the picture to his Instagram page.
The Villa shirt had Marcus Rashford’s name plastered on the back and has been widely interpreted as a dig at United manager Ruben Amorim, who allowed Rashford to leave on loan for Villa in the winter and wants to sell him.
Amorim has, wisely, decided that Garnacho, 20, is surplus to requirements at Old Trafford, too. Garnacho has talent. He has isolated moments of brilliance. But he is one of those players who is simply not worth the hassle.
Maybe someone among the back-slappers and glad-handers who surround him might want to point out to the kid that he has just played his part in United’s worst season for more than 30 years and that this does not put him in a position of strength.
Maybe someone among his cheerleaders might want to mention to him that wearing the shirt of another club will be regarded as betrayal by United supporters who have been loyal to him and whose season tickets help to pay his extortionately overblown wages.
Alejandro Garnacho's photo in an Aston Villa shirt next to a Ferrari and a Lamborghini is the quintessential image of football's age of entitlement and of detachment towards supporters
Garnacho's entourage would do well to warn him that he is heading down the road to perdition
Ruben Amorim seems to have adopted the All Blacks 'no d***heads' policy, which is progress
Maybe someone ought to have a quiet word and point out to him that even if he is an exciting young player, he is not remotely as good as he thinks he is. He wouldn’t get close to the Liverpool side, nor that of Manchester City. He wouldn’t get in Arsenal’s first XI, nor Newcastle United’s.
The truth is he is as immature on the pitch as he is off it. Yes, he has talent but he gives the ball away too often to be a top-four player, he runs down blind alleys too often to be a top-four player, and he does not work hard enough to be a top-four player.
Let’s be generous for a moment and accept there are mitigating circumstances for Garnacho’s behaviour. These are that he is young, he is immature, and he is stupid. We all make mistakes but someone needs to tell Garnacho he’s heading down the road to perdition.
He’ll get another club this summer. Another big club probably. Another club with more money than sense. Chelsea fit these criteria and, not surprisingly given their scattergun transfer policy, are regarded as the favourites to sign him.
But what do you think they, or any other club wondering about paying a lot of money for him, will be thinking when they look at the picture of him in a Villa shirt?
They’ll already be wondering if they’re about to make a mistake. They’ll be worrying they’ve got a liability on their hands. They’ll be thinking they’re signing a talented player. They’ll also be realising they’re about to acquire a whole bunch of trouble.
Perhaps Chelsea won’t care about any of that. They have already proved under the ownership of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali that their recruitment is deeply flawed. They took Jadon Sancho on loan from United, don’t forget, and have just had to pay £5million to send him back.
But if Chelsea aren’t learning their lessons, there are signs United are. Under Amorim, there seems to be something akin to the famous All Blacks ‘no d***heads’ policy starting to form. Not surprisingly, it seems Garnacho fell foul of that policy straightaway.
Garnacho is too immature, too inconsistent and not hard-working enough to be a top-four star
Manchester United have been forced to take risks in recent years on players with bad attitudes
Garnacho looked bored and yawned as he signed autographs on United's post-season tour
Garnacho is the epitome of everything the All Blacks would have run a million miles from. In a sporting context, a d***head makes everything about them, not the team. Hello Alejandro. A d***head chooses arrogance over humility. Hello again, Alejandro.
And so even if United fans are infuriated by Garnacho’s behaviour, the imminent end of his association with the club is something to celebrate. It is a sign of progress. It is a sign the club are bored of indulging spoilt brats who live like princes and play like paupers.
The problem for United for much of the last decade was that their mediocrity meant they had to take chances with the character of the players they signed. The best players, the best characters, went to the best clubs.
Too often, United had to go for players who just wanted the money, players the top teams did not want, players that were coming for the wrong reasons. The lower you finish in the table, the more chances the club have to take. Failures of recruitment, as much as anything, have condemned them to all these years in purgatory.
If last season’s horrors finally woke United up to that, then maybe all the pain will not have been in vain. Amorim wears the air of a manager who is not prepared to tolerate distractions caused by needy fools such as Garnacho and their sycophantic entourages.
As far as his United career is concerned, it appears the picture of him in an Villa shirt, a rich kid in his playground, thinking he’s being smart, thinking he’s being cute, will be his epitaph.
He will leave as one more sad symbol of the dysfunction that has wracked the club since Sir Alex Ferguson left, a kid who thought he was a king before he had won anything at all.
