Breaking down how Scott McTominay has transformed his game for club and country since Man Utd exit

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Since making the move from Manchester United to Napoli, Scott McTominay has been reimagined by the footballing world and deservingly so.

Scott McTominay is one example of why Ruben Amorim should place trust in the academy.

The Carrington graduate went from being a spare part under Erik ten Hag at Manchester United to becoming the vital cog in the Napoli side, which lifted the Scudetto last season.

McTominay was named Serie A MVP in this campaign, scoring goals and being Antonio Conte’s main man without Napoli’s prior hero duo of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Victor Osimhen.

As a result of this form, McTominay was nominated for the Ballon d’Or, which makes the decision to sell him for just £25m to fund the Manuel Ugarte move increasingly frustrating.

Scott McTominay has transformed his goal output since leaving Manchester United

In McTominay’s final season at United, there were signs of his improving goal record with seven in the 2023/24 campaign, mostly from the bench.

However, ever since his move to Italy, this record has exploded both for club and country, as the table below showcases.

This is a goals per game difference of McTominay scoring three times more often than he did at United, with lethal finishing and his positioning improving massively in the latter years of his career.

The best goal yet came when McTominay scored an overhead kick for Scotland to help send his nation to the World Cup.

McTominay deserves massive praise for reinventing himself and becoming a player who is so different to the one United managers kept turning him into, misprofiling him entirely.

The player McTominay is right now would be a perfect fit into Amorim’s United side as one of the two number 10s, and his improvements could have actually been possible at Old Trafford.

Manchester United failed to get the best from Scott McTominay

While the Scottish hero has clearly found new levels to his game, the way he was used at Manchester United didn’t give him the platform to succeed.

For the vast majority of McTominay’s performances for United, he was used in a defensive midfield pivot where he was tasked with breaking up play without much license to roam forward.

McTominay was probably pigeonholed by previous managers who saw his size and athleticism and thought he must be a midfielder.

Jose Mourinho was responsible for setting this in motion, with McTominay being more offensive in the academy and had United profiled the academy graduate correctly, he could be putting in these displays for the club right now, instead of for Napoli.