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Manchester United’s Scott McTominay divides opinion like few other players at the club.
The Scotsman has just come off the back of his most prolific season to date, scoring 10 goals in all competitions including a goal in the FA Cup semi-final and two match winning braces against Brentford and Chelsea.
The 27 year old has also impressed massively for Scotland, scoring against Switzerland in Euro 2024 and played a pivotal role in getting them to the competition.
Nonetheless, the player is very much up for sale despite coach Erik ten Hag’s public insistence that he is a key part of the club’s future.
Fulham, Galatasaray, Tottenham Hotspur and Fenerbahce are just some of the clubs who have bid or who are considering bidding for him before the transfer window ends.
On the plus side, McTominay is a grafter who clearly cares deeply about representing Manchester United football club.
The academy product has made 252 appearances for the team he supported as a boy since breaking through under Jose Mourinho in 2017.
So impressed with the Scot, Mourinho invented his own category called “Manager’s player of the year” in 2018 and claimed the prize could only be given to McTominay and labelled him a “special” player.
The Scottish international is a physical specimen at six foot four and has a keen nose for goal. He also has a knack of finding the net on the big occasion as he has scored against Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal in his career.
He showed great character after struggling in Ten Hag’s first year. He carved out a role for himself as a goal-getting super substitute and in ways, is a valuable member of the team.
Nonetheless, in the perverse world of PSR restrictions, academy products are lucrative sources of profit and the sale of McTominay would do wonders for the Red Devils’ ability to spend on targets such as Manuel Ugarte and Matthijs de Ligt.
What’s more, it is highly questionable that McTominay can flourish in the midfield of what Man United want to be. The new sporting department are insistent that the Red Devils attempt to play an aggressive high pressing, possession based style, where they look to dominate the majority of opponents they face.
This does not suit his skillset. He has shown time and time again in his career that he lacks the positional discipline to play as a deep midfielder and the side has often looked very open when he has been playing in the middle.
In addition, the Scot’s passing can be highly erratic and he always seems to play the game at a hundred miles an hour rather than calmly picking a pass or trying to dictate the rhythm of the game.
Pundits like Roy Keane have already labelled the player as having “no footballing intelligence” and at times, it is hard to argue the contrary, as he often seems lost at sea in the midfield battle.
Logically the solution would be to play him further forward but he clearly is well below the levels of Bruno Fernandes or even Mason Mount, so him starting at number ten makes little sense in the long run.
Under normal circumstances where United could spend more freely or if the side from Old Trafford already had a top drawer midfield, McTominay could be a welcome bench piece to bring on at the right moments.
Neither of these are the case and it can also be argued that the 27 year old deserves to be playing as a starter in the Premier League, just at a lower level.
Many United fans could envision McTominay playing a successful role in the starting line up of a team like Fulham or elsewhere in the Premier League’s midtable.
The Scotland international now finds himself at a crossroads in his career, to remain a bench option and be pushed further down the pecking order with every new midfield signing or begin a new chapter on a team where he can be one of the protagonists, as he is with Scotland, where he excels.
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