Manchester Reunited
Will Michael Keane follow in Pogba’s footsteps back to Old Trafford?
Last summer Manchester United made Paul Pogba the most expensive footballer in the history of the game. As has been commented on ad nauseum, they could have saved themselves a lot of money – not just in the fees paid to his agent Mino Raiola, although they now appear to have accounted for almost half of the published transfer fee – but because the Frenchman was in the Manchester United academy before he left for Juventus.
If reports are to be believed then one of the Old Trafford side’s main transfer targets this summer is another of their academy old boys. Michael Keane has blossomed into an England international under Sean Dyche at Burnley and it will cost the United board a damn sight more than the 2 million pounds ($2.6 million) they got for him in January 2015 to get him back to the club. Even with the potential silver lining of a 25 percent sell-on clause, it’s not great business.
Long-term mismanagement
Keane left during Louis van Gaal’s ill-fated reign, and while the Dutchman clearly blooded youngsters, the future England center half was not a player he rated. It’s not all down to Van Gaal, though. David Moyes let players go that would have been better off being allowed to stay, while Pogba was allowed to leave for Turin under Sir Alex Ferguson. He left in order to seek first-team football when United’s midfield was calling out for his energy. Ferguson – who had struggled with his midfield for many a year – decided that calling Paul Scholes out of retirement was the solution. That quick fix became a very expensive mistake.
Expensive not solely because of Pogba’s world-record fee: This is the world’s most expensively assembled squad and it will finish sixth in the Premier League this season. United have spent a lot over the last few postFerguson seasons on players that are not necessarily better than what they let go. Moyes lasted just nine months but still spent the best part of 80 million euros ($89 million); his successor had two seasons that saw him layout nearly 350 million euros, and then Mourinho oversaw another spending spree of 185 million euros upon his arrival last summer. More will be spent in the coming months with the argument being that Mourinho needs the transfer window to make this his team. However, there’s still a certain irony that one of the players that he has his eye on might be one that was deemed surplus to requirements by his predecessor.
Squad players
Not all of those players have left under a cloud. Gerard Pique – winner of every major honor since he returned to Barcelona from his four years at Manchester United – was homesick and Ferguson could not stand in his way. Giuseppe Rossi, a striker with 29 Italy caps despite a career that has been interrupted by injury, was behind four international strikers in the pecking order and decided to seek first-team football elsewhere. Fair enough. But why did Van Gaal effectively force Danny Welbeck out of the club? That’s something that Mourinho has publicly questioned and it seems odd even now that the board sanctioned Welbeck’s transfer to Arsenal.
For all the thoughts of what might have been with Pique or Rossi, Welbeck would be an ideal squad member under Mourinho, as would Jonny Evans – another player Van Gaal let go. These are just two examples of United youth products who could have done a job for the club over the last few seasons that have cost good money after bad to replace. Potential summer signing Keane is the obvious one but there are more. Staying in defense, Ryan Shawcross has often been linked with a return to United over the last decade and would have alleviated this season’s defensive crisis. As would last season’s title-winning Leicester City right back Danny Simpson.
Expensive lesson
Admittedly, some of the departed were not good enough then and have not gone on to be – Darron Gibson, Phil Bardsley and Tom Cleverley are all international footballers and Premier League regulars but not missed at Old Trafford. However, if they had survived the various culls, who is to say what they could have become under Mourinho? This, after all, is a manager that has forced the square peg footballer Marouane Fellaini into several round holes this season.
The Premier League is littered with former United youth teamers that beg that question. Keane’s Burnley teammates Robbie Brady and Tom Heaton came through the ranks at Old Trafford. Neither the Ireland midfielder or England goalkeeper would be out of place in the current senior squad. These tentacles stretch. Keane’s twin brother Will has just gone down with Hull City, Northern Ireland international Craig Cathcart is with Cleverley at Watford, while Gibson leads a Sunderland squad that also features Paddy McNair and Donald Love – two youth players that Moyes signed from his former club. Leicester City also have a trio, with German international goalkeeper Ron-Robert Zieler and midfield mainstay (and England international) Danny Drinkwater alongside Simpson.
It’s a testament to the youth setup at United that so many of their former players go on to careers in the top flight and representing their country, but it is also a stark indication that there has been mismanagement over the last few years given how many would be an improvement on the current squad. It’s hammered home by the fact that three of the most coveted young players in the Premier League this summer – Burnley’s Keane, Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha and Bournemouth’s Joshua King – were at the club in the last few years. Having to expensively re-sign one former youth teamer is a misfortune; another looks like carelessness. Time will tell if Keane might be the last of these expensive lessons.