There seems to be a core friendship group that all brought out the worst in each other. You can trace a line through Pogba, Lingard, Rashford and Sancho and see a lot of the same issues throughout. They’ll be remembered as the Manchester United equivalent of Liverpool’s Spice Boys.
By you. I’ve never seen anybody else refer to these Particular players along those lines.
Personally I think all of these players had
individual careers, individual high points and individual issues. I can’t think why you’d put them all in the same group. Very very strange.
Pogbas issues were the transfer fee, being the most expensive player in the world, and not living up to that. Not having a team structure that allowed him to play in a more advanced role or have a mobile DM to balance the midfield. Despite this he averaged a goal or assist every 175 mins he was on the pitch and his performances when judges in isolation, rather than through the prism of worlds most expensive, were up there with the best perfuming players every season bar his injury ravaged last season. He was picked by three managers 92% of all games he was available for. Injuries made it impossible to keep him at the end of his contract
Lingard was a very good squad player for us, a player SAF had kept an eye on. A person who, It seemed, took responsibility for a whole load outside of football which may have taken its toll. Up to that point he had gone from coming through the youth set up, playing regularly for England, scoring in world cups, winning trophies with United, scoring the winner in an FA cup final for united and a beauty at that, to being a very useful squad player. Once he lost his purpose he was let go. Doesn’t take away the fact that he had a much better career than the likes of Phil Jones and was consistently more useful and used than Juan Mata (an actual let down of a signing)
Rashford, similar to Lingard has been a big player for us. Scored some very very important goals. We don’t know what the issues are with Rashford but there very definitely are some. He claims to be very introverted which makes sense. He seems to struggle to handle pressure and to turn inwardly very often. I’m leaning to the point where it might be best for both parties to separate but for very different reasons to the two players above.
Sancho belongs nowhere in this conversation. Other than skin colour I see no correlation whatsoever and belongs more in a conversation with VDB.
The good thing is that only one of these ‘cancers’ is still at the club so obviously we are far far better off now that we have gotten rid of the ‘problems’.
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