United must solve the Sancho conundrum after slow start
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£72.9m winger looks low on confidence and confused as Solskjaer struggles to find a role for a player he chased for so long
The news that Jadon Sancho had been omitted from the England squad for their games against Albania and San Marino will have felt like another kick in the teeth for the Manchester United winger, but few could argue that it came as much of a surprise.
Gareth Southgate generally likes to pick from players who are featuring regularly for their clubs, and Sancho has been one of several high-profile outcasts at Old Trafford for whom the repercussions are now being felt at international level.
Like Sancho, there was no place in the England squad for Jesse Lingard – Mason Greenwood’s omission, by contrast, was mutually agreed with Southgate – and Donny van de Beek and Anthony Martial have been jettisoned by Holland and France respectively.
It is one of the many sideshows during United’s troubled start to the season, one which Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will hope does not run into more bother when Sancho’s old club, champions Manchester City, pitch up at Old Trafford for a derby layered thick with intrigue.
Gary Neville suggested last weekend that, if Sancho was “not careful”, he could end up in “exactly the same” boat as Van de Beek, whose 14-month Old Trafford career amounts to four league starts, plenty of snubs and persistent questions about his longer-term future.
Solskjaer shot down such suggestions yesterday – and understandably so. Sancho’s United tenure amounts to 14 weeks, not 14 months, and with no prior experience of the Premier League and little in the way of a pre-season, there were no guarantees the transition following his £72.9million summer move from Borussia Dortmund would be straightforward. Yet any plan the manager had for Sancho during a two-year courtship of the 21-yearold looks rather cloudy and, if the subsequent signing of Cristiano
Ronaldo and United’s poor form have presented curveballs for manager and player, the waters have been further muddied by a switch of system to a back five with no obvious room for a right-winger.
Solskjaer insists that change, introduced on what felt like a needs-must basis after the 5-0 capitulation to Liverpool, will not become permanent and that Sancho has a rich future ahead of him. But he looks like a man in need of some direction, and the confusion and lack of confidence he has projected in United colours so far is reflected as much by his reticence to dribble and beat players – the hallmark of his game – as no goals or assists.
Having spent a couple of years in City’s Pep Guardiola-influenced youth teams, with their pretty patterns and possession football, before leaving for Germany in 2017 and being drilled in the art of a hard and fast press,
Sancho suddenly seems confounded by the absence of such precise structure in United’s team. It is not all on United, though. Sancho has to show more of himself. Perhaps a star turn today against the club he left for Dortmund, impatient for first-team football but with the confidence to go abroad and ultimately blaze a trail that other English youngsters have since followed, would be just the springboard Sancho needs.
But, unless Solskjaer feels confident the Liverpool debacle is out of the system and employs a rapid counter-attacking plan that has brought joy against City in the past, a cameo from the bench may be the best he can hope for.
An unused substitute for the past two Premier League matches, against Liverpool and Tottenham, Sancho’s involvement in the past four games has amounted to 20 minutes of football straddling two Champions League matches against Atalanta. He has completed 90 minutes just once, in a Carabao Cup defeat by West Ham, and been substituted in the three league matches he has started.
While well-intentioned, there was a whiff of desperation about the message United’s official Twitter account posted to Sancho and Van de Beek following their introduction for the final few minutes of Wednesday’s game in Bergamo, when only the sheer brilliance and force of will of Ronaldo in stoppage time spared the team from another defeat. “Well played, lads,” followed by an applause emoji felt, in truth, like quite the reach.
But that is where the pair are, hoping for minutes where they can get them. Sancho will come face-to-face at Old Trafford today with another Englishman who is still trying to find his feet after also moving for big money in the summer. Jack Grealish has yet to make his mark at City in the wake of his £100 million move from Aston Villa, but is at least getting the game time he needs as Guardiola works through the adaptation process. Sancho’s own transition is requiring a lot more patience.
Gary Neville suggested he could end up in ‘exactly the same’ boat as Donny van de Beek