Matthijs de Ligt may well underwhelm at Manchester United, but don’t write him off yet

Matthijs de Ligt comes bearing baggage from disappointing spells at Juventus and Bayern Munich, but that doesn’t mean he’ll flop at Manchester United

Manchester United needed a centre-back and want to play a specific style. Manchester United have signed a centre-back who plays that specific style. Apparently, this is a bad move on their part.

Matthijs de Ligt hasn’t kicked a ball for the club yet, but already the signing is being derided as bad business for Erik ten Hag’s side.

There are valid reasons for thinking De Ligt may not work out at Old Trafford. Once lauded as a potential generational talent in the making, the Dutchman has never quite kicked on since his Ajax days.

It’s also one more signing who has previously played under a manager who, lest we forget, almost got sacked at the end of last season, joining a growing band that also includes fellow new arrival from Bayern Munich Noussair Mazraoui, alongside Sofyan Amrabat, Lisandro Martinez, Antony and Andre Onana.

If there is a criticism of United’s transfer policy – lol, just one? – then it has been that reliance on familiarity and a lack of imagination. Are you building a new Manchester United, or Ten Hag FC? In the PSR era, £43m is a lot of carefully-considered cash to lump on a gamble.

There’s every chance De Ligt will be a flop at United, there’s no getting away from it: we’ve included him on our list of most likely Premier League transfer flop contenders for a reason. Signing Ten Hag players has not worked out terribly well for United, and De Ligt has not lived up to his early career hype.

But…there’s also a chance that he might actually turn out to be good.

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De Ligt has not been able to recapture his early-career form since leaving Ajax. Who was the manager who got the best out of him there? That would be Ten Hag.

United have struggled to get used to Ten Hag’s style at least in part because they have not had centre-backs with enough quality and composure on the ball to get their moves going. Know who might help with that? De Ligt.

Making a success of a new signing is often less about raw ability and more about how good a fit they are for what their new club and manager are trying to do. This appears to have escaped the attention of the punditocracy, however, who have already near-universally decided De Ligt’s move is going to be a disaster for United.

Graeme Souness said on talkSPORT: “I’m doubtful about De Ligt. He didn’t get into the national team during the Euros, he was a squad member.”

True though that undoubtedly is, the Netherlands reached the semi-finals with Virgil van Dijk and Stefan de Vrij playing at centre-back, both of whom we hear are quite good. Strangely, Souness seemed to have no issue about Martin Zubimendi having been a ‘squad player’ for Spain at the Euros before he turned Liverpool down.

Souness went on about De Ligt: “He’s been at two enormous football clubs, they normally don’t like to sell players. That in itself tells a story.”

Paul Scholes added to that on The Overlap, saying: “With Man Utd, we’re talking about players who can’t get into their team.

“He’s [De Ligt] not playing for them [Bayern], that has to be a big concern, especially when Eric Dier is playing in front of him. That is a massive concern for me. Juventus got rid of him, he wasn’t good enough there and he obviously hasn’t been good enough at Bayern Munich. He’s coming to us almost like a second-rate defender.”

Bayern have sold players to PSG, Liverpool, Inter and Barcelona over the past few years. Also: De Ligt cost Manchester United £43m and Bayern €67m. He’s not been flogged for a bag of kit, some goalposts and a box of Toffee Crisps. ‘Don’t buy players from massive clubs because it probably means they’re rubbish’ feels like a strange line of reasoning to build an argument around.

And Tim Sherwood said on Sky Sports: “Do I think he’s better than Harry Maguire? I’m not sure. He’s certainly not better than Martinez.”

Whether that’s true or not, it’s also besides the point. Jonny Evans at 36 started 16 Premier League games last season, which respectfully, is not a position any ambitious club should find themselves in. Maguire, meanwhile, has started just 26 league games over the past two seasons, and United’s marquee centre-back signing, Leny Yoro, has immediately got injured and been ruled out for the next three months.

United will be well aware that de Ligt has not been delightful for Juventus and Bayern, but they needed a centre-back not just immediately, but for the longer term. De Ligt is 25 and still has half his career ahead of him; the same cannot be said of Evans or 31-year-old Maguire.

READ NEXT: Man Utd told De Ligt not ‘better than Harry Maguire’ after ‘losing his way’ at Bayern

There’s three things at play here, we suspect. De Ligt has not had the career that was anticipated for him, for one, and we are always strangely condemnatory of good players who were expected to be great: the fact that they are still good gets lost amid the talk of how much better they should have been, leading to the erroneous impression that they’re actually a bit rubbish.

If you showed the same pundits De Ligt’s bio, stats and highlights reel, then put him in a false moustache, called him Matteo Lucchini and said he was coming from Palermo, might the reaction have been different? We suspect so. In this case, familiarity has definitely bred contempt.

We’ve also come to expect that Manchester United signings will be crap, especially if they already have a recognisable name. This is entirely fair.

But finally…the world still, somehow, has not caught up to the fact that in the big transfer supermarket, Manchester United will primarily be signing “second-rate” players. It’s been ten years since they won the league. Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal are far shinier and more attractive than them. If you’re under the age of 25, you can probably add Chelsea to that list too; you’ll have no memory of the pre-Abramovich era.

Not that long ago, Liverpool were paying over the odds for lads from Southampton, snapping up players who got relegated with Hull, Stoke and Newcastle, and taking a punt on Manchester City and Chelsea rejects. Turned out van Dijk, Sadio Mane, Andy Robertson, Xherdan Shaqiri, Gini Wijnaldum, James Milner and Mo Salah were quite decent in the end.

A player’s history is irrelevant; it’s all about what they do after signing and how the pieces fit together. We can’t pretend Manchester United are being extremely savvy, or assert that De Ligt will actually be a huge success. They might still be a shambles. There’s every chance he’ll be hopeless. But probably best to wait and actually see first, eh?