The boos started up again in the 75th minute. Manchester United were being held to a 1-1 draw by a Wolves side on pace to shatter Derby’s County’s record of futility in the Premier League. At that point, United had managed 11 shots for a paltry 0.58 xG.
Whatever Ruben Amorim’s Plan A had been was clearly not working. Now, 75 minutes into the match and needing a goal to avoid total embarrassment, Amorim decided to make a change. Two new players were going to be introduced into the match, debutant Bendito
Mantato and Leny Yoro, a center back. Safe to say this was not the change fans wanted to see.
Ruben Amorim didn’t have many other options. A spate of injuries along with key absences due to AFCON forced him into selecting a very weak starting XI. When he looked down the bench to see his options there he saw only two senior footballers: Leny Yoro and Tyrell Malacia. The former is only 20 years old, the latter was on Amorim’s “bomb squad” of players told to find new clubs this past summer. Both are defenders.
The rest of the bench was made up of kids called up from United’s academy. Tyler Fredricson (another defender) and Chido Obi both made a few appearances last season. Jack Fletcher has appeared in United’s last two games and his twin brother Tyler also made the bench. Shea Lacey made his debut last week and then there was Montato. It was bleak.
Amorim’s use of academy players has been a hot topic all season primarily due to the lack of playing time for Kobbie Mainoo. It’s picked up steam again in recent days due to the injury crisis and the poor performance(s) of players such as Joshua Zirkzee frustrating fans and having them believe an academy player could take his place. The frustration grew when Zirkzee was picked in the starting XI off the back of a horrific cameo against Newcastle rather than giving a chance to someone like Lacey.
Promoting players from the academy is part of the ethos of the club and there are some fans who feel that Amorim’s reluctance to use kids from Carrington is a sign that he just doesn’t get “it.”
But it’s never that simple is it?
The ethos of the club might be to promote players from within but that’s not exactly by choice. Sir Matt Busby built his great teams through the United academy but that was in an era where there weren’t foreign players and, most importantly, there wasn’t any money to sign more established players. If United had the means to afford some of the best players in the league you can be sure he would have. But he didn’t, so he focused on finding the best schoolboys in the country and bringing them to United when still in the youth ranks.
Sir Alex Ferguson had the Class of 92. There is the famous line from Alan Hansen that “you’ll never win anything with kids” only for United to immediately win the league with a bunch of fresh faced academy kids in the team.
But Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t promote the likes of Scholes, Beckham, and Giggs because he just wanted to give a chance to some youth players because that’s what the club is about. He promoted them because he knew they were better than the players he previously had – and those players had just won two Premier League titles! United had recently signed Eric Cantona and broke the British transfer record for Roy Keane. If there were better players than Scholes and Beckham out there, Fergie would have went for them.
I believe in this ethos of the club. I love seeing a player whose “one of our own” rise through the ranks and become a staple in the first team. It’s what the club is all about. Hell, it’s what football is all about.
Yet I can’t fault Amorim too much for not playing academy kids because, what if those kids just aren’t good enough for the Premier League? In fact, odds are they aren’t. As the Premier League becomes more global the gap between academy football and first team football only grows wider. It’s no longer about being the best 19 year old in the local area if you’re trying to get into the first team, you’re now competing with 19 year olds from all over the world.
The academy system is filled with teams made up of every team’s best prospects, yet only a small handful of them will reach the Premier League. An even smaller handful will establish themselves as Premier League mainstays. The odds only get worse as more money and quality get pumped into the Premier League.
It’s naive to think there’s a bunch of Premier League quality players waiting in the wings at Carrington. For starters, United don’t even have the best academy in their own city. Manchester City are routinely beating them to the best local youth talent these days. Despite that City aren’t exactly churning out talent. They currently have roughly three academy players in their squad (depending on how you feel about Rico Lewis), which is the most they’ve had in years. That number includes the long tenured Phil Foden.
Yes City have a much more difficult team to break into at the moment and they routinely sell academy products for big money. Over the last 10 years City have sold 43 academy players for £1 million or more. Of those 43 players only seven are currently in the Premier League and five of those seven are backups! For every Cole Palmer that gets away, there’s dozens of players who don’t make it. For every player who gets sold for £1 million, there are five or six others who just get released.
Developing Premier League talent is hard, and if the most well funded academy in the city is struggling to do it, odds are high that you are too.
No one should know this better than Ruben Amorim and the United coaching staff. They’ve seen these players on the training ground. They can see firsthand if the players look like they belong amongst the group of United’s senior players or if they look completely outmatched.
Generally I believe managers know when academy players aren’t ready and won’t be of much use on the pitch. They are privy to a lot more information than you or I are. Managers no longer have the job security where they can afford to put in overmatched players and let them figure it out. They’re going to pick the players they believe can help them win today.
With that context it’s entirely understandable why Shea Lacey wasn’t given a start. It’d be completely understandable if Amorim knew that as poor as United’s senior players were playing, the guys on the bench still couldn’t help him. Their places on the bench were ceremonial. They were merely making up the numbers.
Then you look at the situation Amorim found himself in and the context changes. 70 minutes of absolute nothingness against a team who are favorites to go down as the worst team in Premier League history. There is no better time to take a kid and say “well, let’s see what you got.”
Odds are they won’t have anything. They’ll go on the pitch and fail to make an impact. They might even be invisible out there. Jack Fletcher was deployed out of position most of the second half but even when he moved inside he was hardly noticeable. The performances of him and Montado didn’t exactly flatter the rest of the kids on the bench.
Nevertheless what do you have to do lose? Last week against Aston Villa Amorim brought Shea Lacey on for the final seven minutes plus stoppage time. Why’d he do it there? Because he had nothing to lose! United were chasing the game. The worst case scenario would be Lacey making a colossal mistake that leads directly to Villa scoring another goal to make it a two goal game. But who cares? You were losing anyway, that mistake wouldn’t cost you a result.
The situation was a little different against Wolves given that the scores were level. Managers are always more conservative when the game is level because they’re equally – if not more – concerned about the opposition scoring against you and costing you a point rather than pushing for that extra goal that’ll gain you two points. It’d be one thing if you were holding on to a 1-1 draw against Chelsea or even West Ham, situations where a draw would be respectful or even fairly disappointing. But this was Wolves, at home. A draw in this match is just as embarrassing as a loss!
You can certainly argue that the match going fans should not have any impact on a managers decisions but does Ruben not owe them anything? Old Trafford hasn’t hosted a weekend match since before Halloween. These fans have been coming out on weeknights for two months and with the exception of the Bournemouth match, have been treated to mostly dreadful performances.
Tuesday night was no exception and after watching futility for 70 minutes those fans – likely inspired by the misguided belief that the academy kids can’t be any worse – wanted to see what those kids could do. Would they have gone home even mildly happier had Amorim thrown a few more kids on the pitch who still didn’t make an impact? I think so. At the very least we’d see with our own eyes that they aren’t up to it yet.
Perhaps the most important reason Amorim should have rolled the dice is simply, sometimes managers get it wrong! Sir Alex Ferguson picked Rio Ferdinand and Rafael Da Silva to play in midfield over Paul Pogba. Jose Mourinho famously discounted Kevin de Bruyne and Mohammad Salah while at Chelsea. Erik Ten Hag played Omari Forson instead of Amad!
Marcus Rashford was ready when he was given his debut by Louis van Gaal. Yet Rashford had been making sporadic appearances on the bench for months with Van Gaal having no interest in playing him. Instead he kept giving chances to Will Keane who never did anything.
Rashford got his chance only because of a fluke run of injuries leaving Van Gall with no other choice. How long would it have taken Rashford to get his chance if Anthony Martial didn’t get injured in the warmup against FC Midtjylland?
The reality is it’s almost impossible to know if a player is ready or not. There are countless examples of youth coaches believing a player has all the right qualities and is ready for his debut only to watch him look completely out of his depth when he finally gets called up. There are plenty of examples of the 4th of 5th best player in a youth team getting a surprise call up, then looking right at home in his first top flight appearance leaving everyone to wonder why he wasn’t called up months sooner. There’s so much more that goes into it besides talent, ability, and size. Really the only way to truly determine if a kid has what it takes is to actually give him a shot.
The players on United’s bench Tuesday night are most likely not Premier League quality. But on Tuesday night Ruben Amorim was presented with a can’t lose situation. Give a 20 minute runout to the academy kids that fans want to see. Either they bail you out or, you get the fans off your back when they see what you’ve already learned behind closed doors. Somehow Ruben Amorim still managed to lose.
