The Red Devils have been unable to get the best out of many talented forwards, and they cannot make the same mistake with the thrilling Argentine
Manchester United will not be going to Wembley this season, but at least they will be represented by two of their homegrown players after Marcus Rashford and Anthony Elanga helped Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest, respectively, reach the semi-finals of the FA Cup. And while United were having the weekend off due to being knocked out of the competition by Fulham in the fifth round, Antony continued his excellent loan spell with Real Betis, helping them to a long-awaited win over arch-rivals Sevilla.
United's unwanted wingers come to mind as they head to Forest on Tuesday, worlds apart from when they visited the City Ground in April 2023. That was the day Antony ended a long goal drought by inspiring the Red Devils to a 2-0 win which lifted them to third in the Premier League and left Forest on the brink of the relegation zone. Rashford was out injured that day, but he was in the midst of his most prolific season ever, on his way to scoring 30 goals. Elanga, meanwhile, was an unused substitute, with Jadon Sancho starting ahead of him.
Fast-forward two years and Forest are third in the league and closing in on Champions League qualification, while United are all the way down in 13th. Relegation might not be a threat any more, but there's no escaping that this has been a harrowing campaign for everyone involved.
The embarrassment of riches that United had when it came to exciting wingers has also been eroded, but their loss has been to the advantage of other clubs. Sancho, admittedly, has not made much progress on loan at Chelsea despite a positive start, but everyone else is thriving away from Old Trafford. Elanga is tearing it up with Forest, while Rashford and Antony have revitalised their flagging careers during their respective loan spells.
Given all these recent precedents, United need to tread very carefully with one of the few remaining exciting wingers they have left: Alejandro Garnacho.
Getty ImagesRashford revitalised
Rashford's resurgence at Villa must make for uncomfortable viewing for Ruben Amorim, despite him insisting that he is happy that the England international is having a successful loan spell. The Portuguese spoke about the forward in negative terms before he had taken charge of his first game as United boss, questioning Rashford's decision to fly to the United States during the November international break. And even after Rashford scored the first goal of the coach's tenure at Ipswich, he spoke about the need for the striker to get back to his old self, saying: "He has to be the first one to want it."
Amorim's biggest gripe with Rashford was his attitude to training and his lifestyle off the pitch, which led to him being dropped for the Manchester derby in December after learning that the player had enjoyed a night out less than 48 hours before the previous match against Everton. The coach refused to back down in the confrontation with United's homegrown star and sensationally declared that he would rather pick the 63-year-old goalkeeping coach Jorge Vital than Rashford due to the negative impact it would have on the team.
Given his low opinion of Rashford's attitude to training while at United, it must have been grating for the coach to not only see him score twice against Preston North End on Sunday, but also to hear the striker declare: "I feel like I've been getting fitter and playing better football since I've been here. I missed a lot of football before joining up with them. My body feels good and I'm enjoying my football for now."
AdvertisementGettyToo comfortable
But while Rashford's uptick in form might be embarrassing for Amorim, the truth is that many United fans agreed with the coach's decision to cast him aside from the squad.
The club gave Rashford everything to succeed, handing him a highly lucrative long-term contract in the summer of 2023 and looked to build the team around him. Rashford, however, did not fulfil his end of the bargain. His form dropped sharply after signing that new deal and he disrespected the club on more than one occasion, as he visited to a nightclub after the 2023 derby defeat to City and then missed training after going off the rails in Belfast a few months later.
For whatever reason, Rashford felt too comfortable at United and got complacent. The fact that he is turning a corner at Villa says more about him than it does about the club or Amorim. After all, Rashford had both the best season of his career under Erik ten Hag and then one of his worst campaigns while playing for the Dutchman.
The coach and club can also be excused for the way Antony has taken off at Betis. The slower pace of Spanish football seems to suit the Brazilian much more than the Premier League, as Amorim alluded to when he said that the English top flight was too physical for the former Ajax star.
Getty ImagesOne that got away
The player whose progress since leaving Old Trafford truly embarrasses United is Elanga. The Sweden international's emergence under Ralf Rangnick was the one positive note of an otherwise terrible 2021-22 season, and he looked like being a future star. However, Elanga had the misfortune of his rise coinciding with the arrival of Ten Hag, who wanted a winger he already knew and trusted, as he convinced United to sign Antony.
Elanga's path into the starting XI was further blocked by the insatiable form of Rashford, while should also be said that United were not yet ready to give up on Sancho, who had cost the club £74 million ($94m) two years previously.
So Elanga was the winger United decided to let go in the summer of 2023, and the £15m ($19m) fee they received from Forest for him even felt reasonable at the time. But it now looks like a glaring miscalculation, an insultingly low valuation for a player who has turned into one of the most thrilling forwards in the league. Since switching to Forest, Elanga has directly contributed to 27 Premier League goals, more than every United player apart from Bruno Fernandes.
Elanga has either scored or assisted more than a quarter of Forest's goals this season, being their second-most productive player behind top scorer Chris Wood. He provided three assists in one game alone, the shock 7-0 drubbing of Brighton, as Forest have helped him realise his true potential and made him enjoy his football far more.
He told in January: "At Man United, I felt like I was playing for the sake of playing. I want to find ways to learn and improve and coming to a different team, a different type of status and stuff allowed me to properly find ways to improve. I feel like here is a really, really big family club that everyone is really together. I’m not saying we weren’t together at United, but I’m saying here we’re really, really together and it’s showing on the pitch as well."
Getty Star in the making
Elanga made 14 Premier League starts in his first season with United, but just five in his second campaign. United would argue that he did not show enough in those two seasons, and it is true that he only contributed to seven goals while in the first team. Indeed, his exciting rise was quickly overshadowed a year later by the thrilling emergence of Garnacho, who contributed to nine goals in his breakthrough campaign and 14 in his second season, among them his Puskas Award-winning bicycle kick against Everton and the opener in the FA Cup final.
The Argentina international has achieved far more with United than Elanga did, and yet it feels as if the club have not learned their lesson. United made it clear that they were willing to part with Garnacho in the January transfer window, although they never received a suitable offer for him despite interest from Chelsea and Napoli. The ex-Atletico Madrid starlet is also likely to be seen as a valuable export when the summer window opens as United look to bring in extra revenue to combat their much-publicised financial crisis.