Manchester United’s decision-making with regards to the squad-building has been questionable at best since Sir Alex Ferguson retired.
It is why Ruben Amorim currently finds himself in an unenviable position where he’s bearing the brunt of Man Utd’s past mistakes in the market.
More than a billion pounds have been squandered to leave the Man Utd manager in a situation where it seems like another large-scale rebuild is needed.
Those mistakes can best be summed up by their claim at the time that they had secured one of the best defenders in the world.
Man Utd’s Luke Shaw claim
The season is 2022/23 and Erik ten Hag, after an iffy start, doesn’t just solidify Man Utd but is making the team thrive in multiple competitions.
Champions League qualification through the league is achieved, the trophy drought of more than five years is broken, and the team looks set to use it as a launchpad to greater things.
A big part of that successful season was Luke Shaw, who made a remarkable return to break a cruel injury streak and appeared in 47 games across all competitions that season.
He played 3,646 minutes of football, the most he had played in a single season for Man Utd since his arrival, and his importance to the team was clear.
When Shaw played and played well, so did United, and the club backed him to the hill, awarding him a new contract on April 4, 2023.
At the time, John Murtough, the then-United director of football, told Man Utd’s official website: “Luke is a massively important player to the squad and has grown into one of the best defenders in the world.
“He has been at the club for nearly a decade and understands the expectations for success, and the hard work, commitment and high standards required to achieve it.”
Shaw’s Man Utd contract has backfired badly
Since that lofty proclamation, Shaw has played 1,278 minutes of football in the 2023/24 and the 2024/25 seasons combined.
His contract, running till 2027, has turned into another albatross around Amorim’s neck, a legacy of the previous administration hungry for touting any good news/success.
Instead, his wages, reported to be somewhere between £150k-200k/week, without any incentive for actually playing, have become impossible to shift.
- READ: Confirmed Manchester United transfer deals for January 2025, ins, outs, loan moves, deadline date
United and Shaw are stuck in a vicious cycle of hope-setback-grief-hope and with his latest return close, everyone is back in the “hope” part of that cycle.
Every United fan will be praying that this is the time he finally breaks the vicious cycle and manages to stay on track to be at least somewhat consistent in availability.
His contract has backfired badly as it is and suitors aren’t expected to be interested. The best bet for both, the club and Shaw is that he can rediscover the some percentage of fitness that believably led Utd to call him one of the best defenders in the world less than two years ago.
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