How did Ten Hag play Antony instead of Sancho? Man Utd need Rangnick back to sort ‘spineless’ mess

The Jadon Sancho revisionism must stop – but also how did Antony play ahead of him? The only way to sort this ‘spineless’ mess is to trust Ralf Rangnick.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

The Jadon Sancho (and Will Ford) fanmail is in
So Dortmund beat PSG in the Champions League and that means that Manchester United need to sack their coach. That is your headline. Come on F365…. there is an obvious agenda to get Ten Hag fired and you are crossing lines here. Yes, everyone is aware this will get you the most clicks, but Ted Bundy had groupies. See, not nice when lines are crossed.

For what it’s worth, no as a United fan I wouldn’t pick Sancho over anyone. I wouldn’t pick him over one more seat for the audience I don’t see. He was terrible on the left, was worse then terrible when played on the right, even though that’s what we got him for just like every other attacking player we have bought over the last decade before they eventually move to the left inside channel, had a terrible attitude and proved he is not a team player. The last thing we need is more individualistic narcissists.

It appears that Ten Hag may have lost the plot this season but we don’t really know. I think that Rangnick needs to be brought back above Ten Hag as was intended. He saw the condition of these players mentally when they weren’t babysat. He treated them like adults and watched. Bring him back because he saw first hand how spineless most of these players were, and keep Ten Hag because these players cannot be given any more excuses and last chances. It would just delay the clear out that has been needed for so long.
Zdravko

Sancho was very good last night and the narrative is so juicy that I understand the hype but lets not get carried away. This is not an unusual occurrence for Sancho and despite what Will Ford says the lad has played that well for United and it wasn’t even that long ago. In the 4-1 win over Chelsea at the end of last season he was properly amazing, this after a season of apparent poor treatment from Ten Hag.

The issue with Sancho isn’t his talent, which is prodigious, its how often he can produce that talent in a game and the drop off between his best and his standard. The guy puts in 5/10 performances for 20 or 30 games in a row then drops a 9/10 in a big game and everyone falls over themselves to elevate him as world class. I was so excited when he came to United, a young English attacking right winger, it’s what we had needed for years. But when you watch him week in week out he’s just not good consistently enough. His 5/10 performances need to be the rare occurrence, not the 9/10 ones.

Even if he could average somewhere in between he’d be brilliant. We may get to see that in Dortmund where the pressure isn’t as high and the environment better suited for him but I still feel his attitude and indiscipline will be a barrier to proper elite status.
Dave, Manchester

Firstly, assuming Mr. Ford is paid for clicks and engagement, then he is doing a great job with the Sancho article. That’s the point, after all, right?

To the actual player himself: well quite, performances like last night do indeed raise questions. But not about Manchester United, or Ole, or Southgate, or ETH but about Jadon Sancho.

Almost every professional footballer has an evening like last night in them. When everything just falls into place and for a given hour and a half the ball bounces beautifully. The difference between most professional footballers and the best ones is being able to do it consistently, over time, when the ball isn’t bouncing your way.

Jadon Sancho is a prime-aged footballer compensated as if he were one of the best in the world, and simply does not perform at that level, hasn’t across multiple managers and that is on only one person.
Ryan, Bermuda

Sancho looked like the player united waited for and ultimately paid big money for in 2021.

One world class performance in almost three years has made the non united fans forget his struggles against a fullback who doesn’t cross the halfway line.

He might perform well in the second leg. Make a final. Maybe win a champions league.

No fans from any premier league top 6 clubs would be over the moon to have them at there club when he decides he doesn’t fancy it against the teams below them. Only late February the German media described him the worst player on the pitch by far.

Forget your England call ups there is better and more consistent players available.

I await the ironic picture of him next to his POTM FIFA UT card.

Good luck but don’t rush back.
Jonny, Hull

Dear F365 – you typify the short-term thinking that has contributed to the mess Man United have found themselves in since Ferguson left.  A player loaned out had a good game? Let’s bring him back immediately and get rid of the manager. Let’s ignore the fact that in 2 years at the club he was never more than, at absolute best, below average.

What a joke.
Kevin

Looking at the Jadon Sancho that played against PSG, I have one question for Erik ten Hag: How did you end up playing Antony ahead of this guy? And then wonder why he sulked?
Tunji, Lagos.

MORE ON JADON SANCHO FROM F365
👉 Ferdinand reveals Man Utd ‘plus’ after Sancho ‘arrogance’ v PSG leaves Red Devils fans baffled
👉 Sancho responds to Man Utd return, England recall questions in interview with eight-pints Carragher

Ten Hag should learn from Klopp
I mailed in back when Ten Hag threw Rashford under the bus, stating how anyone in a normal job wouldn’t put up with that, never mind a footballer.

Not just any footballer mind, one whose goals had elevated his team and therefore manager to a level they did not deserve.

A lot of us have been there… Your hard work is seen by the upper management as a success by your immediate boss, giving them undue praise, and you sweet Felicity Arkwright.

However, very few have been in a situation where that same boss publicly chastises you for going to a pre-planned birthday bash, after you behaved well and turn up in perfect condition the next work day. You would be rightfully pissed off and updating your CV.

Difference is that you and I aren’t guaranteed a weekly sum that would be life changing for a huge percentage of the population… Regardless of whether you do well or barely bother to turn up.

If that’s how Ten Hag treats his star homegrown player, it’s not really rocket science that his players don’t want to put in the hard work to keep the dude in a job he doesn’t deserve.

Just look at how Klopp dealt with the Salah situation and how Ten Hag dealt with Sancho and a tweet FFS.

No wonder a player like Sancho is thriving in the champions league away from his man management skills.

Ta muchly,
Dave PVFC 

Arsenal DO need a better goalkeeper
It’s weird to me how F365 clearly sets the header for each submission, which is intended to grab your attention, then the person who wrote the mail gets blamed for something they never actually said because people reply to the header – not the actual message. Haven’t you read Mediawatch?

“Arsenal DO need a better goalkeeper” is, in fact, not at all what I said. Nor were Raya’s errors “three random individual errors”. They were three errors that happened in literally the biggest matches we were playing up until that point (basically all in a row) and also, key, three matches in which we clearly did not have the control our defense is accustomed to. Hence – needing the keeper to do their best job and, moreover, suggesting that we probably should be thinking about whether or not Raya is up to the task.

Is it a coincidence we were blowing away teams in the league up until we faced the “worst Bayern team in decades” (a “half-decent” side according to Will Ford) which is in fact a team that has, in no particular order, Harry Kane, Leroy Sane, Serge Gnabry, Joshua Kimmish, Alphonso Davies, Leon Goretzka, Jamal Musiala, Kingsley Coman, a host of other young talented players (Mathys Tel is far better than Nketiah and he’s their “Nketiah”…Pavlovic…do you guys watch other leagues?), a centerback who somehow starts over Saliba internationally, Kim Min-Jae (arguably the best defender in Serie A last season), Manuel Neuer (ok he’s old but still) and…*checks notes*…Eric Dier.

No – it’s not a coincidence. We went up against one of the best teams in Europe (I love how not winning your domestic league for the 12th time in a row is somehow a catastrophe that minimizes the individual quality of every single player on your team – meanwhile they just went toe-to-toe with Madrid) who actually put pressure on our goal for the first time in any match in weeks and Raya does that. Then we go to Villa – first time we had real pressure on our goal in the league literally since 2023 – and he does that again. Then we go to our biggest rivals in a match we absolutely have to win and he does that…again (again).

This is not random – it seems like it might be a trend. These were literally our three biggest matches up until the point they occurred. I thought the best keepers bail out their defenses when they make errors as opposed to being the ones that played the biggest part in causing them? Especially when we’re talking about the biggest matches.

We should not be “actively” looking for a new keeper – I specifically said “probably” be thinking about other options because, yeah, transfers take a lot of forethought and time to actually make happen and you need to be ready to be ruthless – as we all agree Arteta can and will do. Other positions that were mentioned by Rob A are certainly a priority. We just need to keep in mind that our keeper might not be up to the ever-rising standards we are currently setting and (all things going well) should continue to set and the club should not settle for anything less than truly world-class in such an important position.
MAW, LA Gooner (On to Bournemouth)

Underachievement or overachievement?
I was talking to a Liverpool fan recently and we got around to talking about whether Klopp has under or overachieved at Liverpool. It got me thinking, what exactly is the criteria to evaluate this? Silverware? Sure, but which ones and how many over what time period? How much weighting do you attribute Wenger’s 7 F.A. Cups against Mourinho’s 3 Premier League Titles? Fergie won 13 titles in 26 years, but did he underachieve in Europe?

Should one factor in the the amount of trophies against tenure? Few could argue against Guardiola using this criteria but he did walk into an organization that was already winning trophies. Even then, he had a bit of a lean patch to begin with.

Success v. financial clout is a pretty obvious criteria. I think it was the accounting firm Deloittes who found a direct correlation between players salaries and on-field success, so of course City, and United and Chelsea before them, should have been there or thereabouts at the end of the season. I’m sure Liverpool fans will try and claim the moral high ground by repeating “net spend” ad infinitum but the reality there is that there were still significant outlays, over and above a Spurs or Villa. It makes Leicester’s win even more incredible.

Maybe it’s something that we can never evaluate and it’s just one of those fun topics down at the pub. But for me (and I know this may seem like a typically arrogant MUFC fan thing to say) looking at the financial clout and the players Fergie had, maybe he did under achieve a little bit. I suspect, he would have traded a few Premier League titles for a couple more Champions League trophies, but he did have a bit of bad luck (that Scholes goal disallowed) and came up against the best player and arguably the best team ever at the same time.

I’d be curious to know what fans of other teams think.
Adidasmufc (I hope Fergie never reads this!)

A case for the defences
Lee, defences are not worse than back in the day. The way teams set up and play has changed drastically. That’s the only difference.

You mentioned players like Pirlo shieldig the back 4, but you failed to mention the fact that they brought the ball out from defense to start an attacking phase. Nowadays CBs are more comfortable on the ball and can do that, thus moving midfielders higher up the pitch and leaving the back 4 (default) more exposed. You’d never have seen the likes of McGrath, Maldini, Hierro doing a slaloming run a la Matip for instance back in the day.

And let’s not get started on inverted fullbacks.

Defence has actually gotten better with the advent of more pressing and defending from the front. But if you beat the press you get exposed too. It’s all way more tactical than it once was with all the adaptations to the game that we see now.
Culk the Younger