United were thrilled to land £73m Jadon Sancho but less-than-sparkling form, mental health struggles and the fall-out with Erik ten Hag turned the exiled star’s Old Trafford dream into a nightmare.
When Manchester United wrapped up the signing of Jadon Sancho in July 2021, the mood among the Old Trafford hierarchy was self-congratulatory.
Not only had they acquired one of world football’s most promising talents, United had won a game of poker with Borussia Dortmund by paying only £73million for the winger.
That was a saving of £30m on the German club’s asking price for Sancho 12 months earlier, an eye-watering sum United had balked at.
The 21-year-old had in the interim enjoyed an astonishing season in Germany, scoring 16 goals and supplying 20 assists, cementing his regular place in Gareth Southgate‘s England team.
What’s more, United completed the deal before Ole Gunnar Solskjaer‘s squad began pre-season and had structured their payments to Dortmund over five years to help the balance sheet.
But Sancho has only lasted half that time at Old Trafford and that’s being generous given he hasn’t played a minute for the team since August 26.
As Sancho, now 23, prepares to re-join Dortmund on loan until the end of the season, his story is one of a sad waste of talent and money with both player and club to blame.
Sancho joins the likes of Paul Pogba, Angel Di Maria, Alexis Sanchez and Romelu Lukaku on United’s list of star players they over-paid for in transfer fees and/or wages – but failed to extract the maximum from during a lost decade of decline.
Unless something extraordinary happens in the next six months, Sancho has probably played his last game for United.
That is even more likely to be the case if Ten Hag weathers the storms of a terrible first half of the season and the Ineos takeover to remain in post for a third campaign.
If there was to be a rapprochement between player and manager, surely it would have happened in the four months between Sancho’s exile for accusing Ten Hag of lying in a social media post and his exit to Dortmund.
The sight of Sancho banished to train with United’s academy teams, his food brought across from the first-team canteen in a lunch box and being forced to change with the door locked owing to safeguarding rules is a sorry fall from grace for a footballer on £300,000-a-week.
It was all so different when Solskjaer welcomed Sancho to United in the summer of 2021, having landed a player they first pursued in 2019 and who was a former academy graduate of rivals City.
Sancho endured a difficult summer, bombarded with racially abusive messages on social media after missing – along with Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka – penalties in England’s Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy.
But United offered a fresh start and there was a sense of worth and belonging given how long his new club had wanted him.
As soon as they’d lost the Europa League final on penalties to Villarreal in May, Solskjaer had asked football director John Murtough to get the Sancho deal done, recognising greater threat from wide areas was required.
The triumphant return of Cristiano Ronaldo to Old Trafford later in the window also provided Sancho with cover to adjust to English football and get used to life with the burden of such a big price tag.
It was hardly Sancho’s fault that just a few games in, United’s form crashed and burned so badly that Solskjaer went from ‘at the wheel’ to out of a job.
Oddly enough, his first goals for United, against Chelsea and Villarreal, came under caretaker boss Michael Carrick in the November, before that odd interregnum under Ralf Rangnick.
Sancho ended his debut United campaign with five goals and three assists.
Early in Ten Hag’s tenure, there was a brief few games when we saw the best of Sancho.
The supreme composure shown in his finish against Liverpool in the 2-1 victory Ten Hag so desperately needed following the 4-0 humiliation at Brentford in his second game in charge.
His effortless rounding of the keeper to win United three points at Leicester a couple of matches later and a neat finish against Sheriff in the Europa League just after he’d been left out the England squad.
Alas, that proved an all-too-brief glimpse at peak Sancho in United colours.
One problem was always going to prove intractable. Sancho prefers to play on the left wing, something recognised by both Solskjaer and Ten Hag, but Rashford was in such good form last season he simply couldn’t be dropped.
On the right side, Antony, who cost United even more than Sancho, was very much Ten Hag’s signing and so couldn’t be left out either.
Being left out of England’s World Cup squad – nothing to be ashamed about given Southgate’s wealth of attacking talent – clearly came as a massive blow to Sancho.
Fans were puzzled when he deleted his Instagram posts and blacked out his profile picture. Sancho missed games through illness, then it became a longer absence.
In late November, during the World Cup break, he was spotted training at Dutch amateur club OJC Rosmalen under the close eye of coaches trusted by Ten Hag.
Ten Hag had noticed a drop-off in Sancho’s performances and suggested the ‘reset’ away from Carrington with no deadlines set for his return.
But the United boss in mid-December revealed Sancho ‘wasn’t fit enough… physically or mentally’, raising concerns over his wellbeing.
It wasn’t clear if Ten Hag had revealed a little too much but Sancho did finally return to the team in early February, netting four more goals before the close of the season.
Again, it was hardly a campaign to remember for a player who’d cost United such a significant sum.
It didn’t take very long at all for things to go wrong this season. Ten Hag deployed Sancho in a false nine role during pre-season in an effort to offer an alternative that might lead to more impact.
But once Rasmus Hojlund was signed, again for a remarkable sum, he was never likely to play there.
Sancho came off the bench in United’s opening three Premier League games but didn’t even make the squad for their visit to Arsenal on September 3.
Afterwards, a typically blunt Ten Hag revealed the reason – ‘On his performance in training, we didn’t select him. You have to reach the level every day at Manchester United.’
It amounted to Sancho publicly calling Ten Hag a liar and instead of deleting the post, Sancho pinned the tweet at the top of his X page.
Reports suggested Sancho had not shown sufficient effort in replicating Arsenal’s expected playing style in the final training session before the trip to the Emirates.
Being in the opposition XI in the practice game confirmed Sancho would not be starting again.
Despite Ten Hag showing the winger video clips apparently showing his lack of commitment, an apology was not forthcoming. On September 14, a United statement said Sancho would be training away from the first team ‘pending resolution of a squad discipline issue.’
As the months dragged on and a resolution remained elusive, details emerged of Sancho’s exile. He was training with much younger players hungry for the opportunities he was presently squandering.
There was no shortage of reports criticising Sancho’s time-keeping, late night gaming sessions and lack of maximum application in training.
We’ll never know if Sancho might have found some form to help improve United’s dire first-half of he season, which has put Ten Hag under pressure
It remains to be seen if he can lift Dortmund from their present fifth position in the Bundesliga. Edin Terzic’s team are six points off the top four and 15 shy of leaders Bayer Leverkusen, but they have done well in the Champions League.
Having not played in over four months, Sancho will certainly need time to get back up to speed.
A reintegration at United in the summer will surely require a change of manager or heartfelt contrition towards Ten Hag.
But at the moment Sancho’s sad story at Manchester United seems unlikely to have a happy ending.