Five senior players that Man United should move on from

Manchester United are stuck in a never-ending cycle of having a squad that needs two or three years of work to fix, but they’re only giving managers a year’s worth of patience and it will continue unless something drastically changes.

To blow the entire squad up and start again might be seen as an admittance of defeat before the season has started, critics might say they won’t qualify for the UCL if they take that path, but this squad is only good enough to scrape into the top four once every two or three seasons – actually competing with the elite teams is a mile away just now.

Erik ten Hag really needs time to overhaul this squad, and here’s a look at ten senior players who wouldn’t be getting anywhere close to the first team at clubs like Liverpool, Man City, Real Madrid, PSG, etc.

Harry Maguire: Cost £80m

Every club in world football wants to play a dynamic style, where the strikers can press from the front and the defence can stay high to minimise the space for the opposition to play in. With Harry Maguire, Man United are forced to treat Maguire like the king in Chess – he can barely move, needs multiple players close to guard him and if he’s left isolated then you’ve got major problems.

At Leicester City he also showed the ability to step out from the back and create, but that’s rarely on show at Old Trafford either. He might look good in a back three when he’s well protected, but he’s not someone who stands out and elevates those around him, so the time has come to move on.

Eric Bailly – £38.5m

If you could somehow combine the better parts of Maguire and Bailly’s game then you might actually come up with a pretty good defender. The problem is, that they both have the potential to cause absolute chaos when on the field, and as a combination, it just doesn’t work either.

Bailly does have strong athletic traits and you can argue that his decisiveness could be useful if he made consistently good decisions, but he’s simply too rash to be reliable at this level, and his tendency to get pulled out of position also leaves his partner exposed and it’s a weakness that can be exploited.

When he arrived it did look like he had the raw talent to improve and become a top-level defender, but that’s simply never going to be the case.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka – £50m

The full-back may be one of the most under-appreciated roles at the highest level. The best teams have defenders who can occupy an entire flank and demand…