Pereira’s still part of plan for Solskjaer
FROM also-ran to starter. The irony is Andreas Pereira was advised to push against Jose Mourinho’s plans to use him as a holding midfielder after an encouraging pre-season in 2018 largely devoid of World Cup participants. He was never going to.
He was 22 at the time, had never started a Premier League match and was certain of beginning the season after an underwhelming year on loan with Valencia.
Had Pereira listened to the advice, he would likely have been outed by his manager and scapegoated by supporters.
Pereira’s attitude has never been in question and he has wilfully played out of position, often to his detriment.
He has started 25 times this season - more than twice the amount of starts he previously made for United in five years - and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has tinkered with Pereira’s position in the side as much as Sir Alex Ferguson did with Wayne Rooney.
The Brazilian lined up in 11 successive league games from August to December but occupied three positions and his inclusions began to grate with some fans.
Pereira dropped back to midfield to accommodate Bruno Fernandes as No.10 against Wolves and he last started in the drab draw with Club Brugge.
Solskjaer was so unimpressed by Pereira and the ineffectual Jesse Lingard in Belgium both were excluded from the following weekend’s squad against Watford. From regular to rotation.
Pereira is at the back of the midfield queue again and whenever United deploy a playmaker it is Fernandes, with Juan Mata an expert alternative.
Pereira replaced Fernandes in Linz and his quick-thinking was rewarded with a first European goal, albeit via a foam-handed goalkeeper.
Of all the
United squad members being squeezed out, Pereira is likely to stay in.
Five midfielders is insufficient when at least three usually start and Soslkjaer soon realised that after the failure to offset Ander Herrera’s departure.
Come mid-November, Pogba,
Nemanja Matic and Scott McTominay were all injured and the Pereira-Fred axis at Sheffield United was so flimsy Gary Neville claimed the Reds had ‘no midfield.’ James Garner has not had as many minutes as he would have liked and there was interest from Football League clubs to take him on loan in January.
The 19-year-old has not had a look-in since December and the head of first-team development Nicky Butt empathised.
“I think I’d probably be the same if I was 18 or 19 and not getting in the first-team,” Butt told M.E.N. Sport. “I’d want to go and play men’s football as well, because you do come to a point in the reserves where you bypass that and it does become too easy for you and it becomes a bit lethargic and you also want to push the younger ones up.
“But then also the flip-side of it is you don’t want to dive into the wrong loan spell or wrong club and end up thinking, ‘I’ve made a complete error here, I’m going to lose six
Of all the United squad members being squeezed out, Pereira is likely to stay in
Samuel Luckhurst