The players Manchester United loved and lost, part III
In the last installment of this series, we asked whether Manchester United should have hung onto Zlatan Ibrahimovic rather than allowing him to leave for free to Major League Soccer in the winter of 2018. Just 18 months later they sold Romelu Lukaku to Inter Milan for just €65m, which today is something of a bargain for a top international striker in his peak years. Was it the right decision?
The club probably felt okay about letting Lukaku go because of their youth pipeline. Marcus Rashford was supposed to be their striker of the future, Mason Greenwood was pushing for minutes in the first team, and maybe some folks even thought James Wilson would come good. Even if the youngsters needed more time, Anthony Martial could slot in as a central striker. It wasn't as though the club lacked for options.
Indeed, in the 2018-19 season, Rashford put up numbers that were slightly better than Lukaku's in several areas, and much better for finishing:
With Rashford just about to turn 22, there was reason to expect that the gap in effectiveness would only grow. But these were two very different players. Rashford was much more of a dribbler, but Lukaku was also quite mobile, often receiving the ball outside the box and looking for a pass instead of barreling into the box himself. Lukaku was also much better in the air and contributed more as a defender.
Unfortunately, these styles weren't completely complementary. After Jose Mourinho's departure, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer rarely used Lukaku and Rashford together in a two. When he did, the results weren't as good as when one of them started and the other came off the bench.
Since Rashford was the homegrown golden boy, with many more years ahead of him, it was natural that Lukaku should be the one to move on. Also, the bosses at Old Trafford may have thought they could do better than a striker who was just a few ticks above average for attacking output and finishing – at least in the role he had at the club. From that perspective, €65m looked like good business. The problem was that they didn't replace Lukaku with a player who'd be a better fit next to Rashford; in fact, they didn't replace him at all until Odion Ighalo's pandemic-disrupted transfer.
The big question, then, was whether Manchester United should have lined up a solid replacement before letting Lukaku go. And that question now looms even larger after Rashford suffered a pair of nasty injuries.
In the midst of the club's tribulations with strikers, there was one other decision that they might now regret. It wasn't the cut-price sale of a 31-year-old Marouane Fellaini to Shandong Luneng in February 2019. Nor was it Ander Herrera's transfer to Paris Saint-Germain. Though it was a shame to let a quality player go on a free, Fred was an upgrade. The Brazilian was almost four years younger, had a similar style, and offered much higher defensive output:
It wasn't the sale of Daley Blind to Ajax in the summer of 2018, either. Even at his advanced age, Ashley Young played very well at LB during the 2018-19 season, and this season Brandon Williams has been outstanding while still a teenager. No, the move Manchester United might want to take back was the loan of Chris Smalling to Roma.
Smalling was the obvious partner for Harry Maguire in the middle of Manchester United's back line. Each player had leadership qualities, and their styles truly were complementary. While Maguire liked to dribble the ball out of the back, Smalling was much more of a link-up passer. Moreover, Smalling was far superior to Victor Lindelof as an overall defender:
And all of this was before Smalling's renaissance as a dominant attacking CB in Serie A. Clearly, some of the graybeards at Old Trafford – or at least Solskjaer – still thought Lindelof was the future at RCB. But the stats didn't offer much support for that belief.
Smalling will be back in the summer, or whenever loans expire, and is under contract for two more seasons. We'd suggest that it's time for Manchester United to cut its losses on Lindelof and use Smalling until they can find a more promising young RCB. What do you think?
[Photo: Дмитрий Голубович]
