Reports of late suggest that Manchester United may be in for two of the world’s best young wide men, Raheem Sterling and Memphis Depay.
The idea of United bringing in Liverpool’s Sterling is very difficult to imagine of course. There will be no shortage of suitors if he does make the rather foolish decision to leave a club where he is developing so well. If he does move on then Liverpool will surely do all they can to avoid selling to Manchester United.
But it does throw up the slightest prospect a forward line to positively jam the mouth full of saliva. When Ronnie was in heyday at the club, Manchester United had the most devastating of counter attacking line ups with the likes of Rooney, Giggs and Tevez all feeding off his pace and amazing ability to bring the ball out of defence and into the opposition danger zone.
With Sterling on one side and Memphis Depay on the other Manchester United could spring from defence into attack in rapier style. They could move from one end of the pitch to the other in a few seconds and provide the service for Wazza to bang in the goals for fun.
If these two did come in you would have to imagine that Angel Di Maria’s place in the side would come under threat. In an ideal world Manchester United would have all three in their arsenal. But none of them is going to want to sit on the bench and, with Mata on fire, he would perhaps be further up the pecking order for a creative position in the side. But, unless Manchester United change their formation from Louis’s preferred 4-3-3 then they may both, ultimately, miss out.
Let’s imagine for a second that Manchester United do sign both. Here’s how they might line up come September.
Simon
Apr 5, 2015 at 6:52 pm
What a joke that U think sterling is anywhere near of di Maria and mata, sterling is massively overrated
soccersweep
Apr 6, 2015 at 6:52 am
Thanks for the message,
Would you have taken Mata over Sterling at Christmas? Or last season?
We are loving Mata too right now but not many were backing him a month ago and many would have swapped him for Sterling in a heartbeat.
It just goes to show how wonderfully unpredictable and changeable our beautiful game is…..
tony oj
Apr 5, 2015 at 6:59 pm
imagine this two players comes in, with sami khiedera shelding the defence, ucl semifinal is waiting for utd. is a matter of time before jose mou begging to call utd apc party, if u’re in nigeria. nowadays, every body /player want to play for utd.
Touljier
Apr 5, 2015 at 7:47 pm
Stupid lineup even if just for ‘shits and giggles’. I can only assume your tele broke and you ran out of bandwidth to keep abreast of how well some of the United players are playing which are not in your suggested 11.
soccersweep
Apr 6, 2015 at 6:48 am
Hi Touljier,
Admittedly, Young works his socks off but Louis has always attempted to bring in really top/quick/skillful players to play either side of a striker. For all his form and work rate, few would argue that Young is that.
Agreed that players like Young, Mata, Blind are playing out of their skin right now but were they really indispensable to your team a month ago? Mata has had two good games after almost a year and a half of mediocrity (albeit scoring at a decent rate). Having watched the game on Saturday in its entirety he was decent on the ball but quiet again. He has probably guaranteed a squad place for next season but we think Louis will attempt to buy another flyer for the right.
The Sterling move is a stretch and we don’t think it will happen. Nor is he good enough right now. Better to play Di Maria into form. But Depay is seen as the next Arjen Robben by many in Holland and United would do extremely well to get him. He’s going to be a top star in our estimation.
Blind has been excellent of late and you are proabably right if you think he deserves to be in the team. But we think that Shaw will come good and eventually offer more dynamism and penetration down the flank. He has been a pale imitation of himself this season but, for the last two years at Southampton, he looked a little like Gareth Bale, tearing up defences with his pace, skill and directness. Maybe not by September, but when he comes good he will demand a starting place. Which is surely a great problem for Louis to have…
Thoughts?
P.s. thanks for your regular, insightful comments