It’s been a long time since Erik ten Hag has had options to choose from, let alone facing the possibility of leaving out worthy players from the first XI!
After last season’s injury nightmare that reached freakish levels of bad luck, this season seemed to have begun on a similar note.
Players kept falling like flies in the pre-season and for one particular position, the Manchester United squad seemed to be cursed.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Diogo Dalot, Victor Lindelof, Luke Shaw, Sofyan Amrabat, Jonny Evans, and Antony have something in common.
They all played at left-back for United last season for varying degrees of minutes, nobody for an extended period of time or doing it successfully.
Now, the face of the position that doomed Ten Hag last looks changed, turbocharged by the return of the £15 million man.
Tyrell Malacia’s return
Manchester United fans recently received the news they had stopped waiting for when Tyrell Malacia returned to team training.
The left-back, who last played for United in May 2023, has finally taken another step in his recovery and at current pace, can reliably return to action before the end of the year at worst.
Having made 39 appearances in his debut season and challenging Luke Shaw, his knee injury kept him out for a long time and continuous setbacks in recovery didn’t help.
However, he looks like he’s on the road to mend it properly this time and with that news, the left-back position looks completely transformed.
United bought Noussair Mazraoui in the summer and he has immediately emerged as United’s best summer signing.
It has forced Dalot to move to left-back, a change he has made with remarkable efficiency and quality.
On current form, even if prospective first-choice left-back Luke Shaw were to return, he would be on the bench because neither Mazraoui nor Dalot have done anything to get dropped.
Add Malacia and Shaw to that picture and United will have five options for two fullback positions, counting Harry Amass, who’s knocking on the door of the first team.
United will be in a position where they can manage Dalot and Mazraoui’s minutes by rotating them on the right, while Shaw and Malacia can continue to man the left flank as intended when the latter came in 2023.
Importance of the squad
While not many would want to relive the injury nightmare of last season, it seems to have opened Ten Hag’s eyes to the importance of rotation.
The manager stuck with the same first XI for most of his first season and the results of that overload were clear to see in the second year.
The increased match load always comes back to cost teams, in the same season or the next, something which Ten Hag accepted recently.
He said in the press conference before the Palace game that he was forced to overload some players due to low availability of others, causing issues to deepen.
Now that he has a better range of options to choose from, he rotated eight players against Barnsley and that should continue for the rest of the campaign.
Ultimately, United play so many games that every player in the team can reasonably expect to get at least 20 games in a season, as a starter or coming off the bench.
Keeping them all happy is a challenge, but that’s a far nicer headache than not having anyone to choose from.
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