Not a waste of money - Man Utd MUST play Paul Pogba in the right position
Paul Pogba’s return to Manchester United is already an unmitigated disaster. Or at least that is the impression you might have got from reading some reviews of the Frenchman’s performances in the losses to Manchester City, Feyenoord and Watford which have set Jose Mourinho’s side back over the past couple of weeks.
Alongside the plight of Wayne Rooney, the role of Pogba has been perhaps the biggest talking point to come from the ugly run which was momentarily brought to a halt by Wednesday’s EFL Cup win at Northampton ahead of Saturday's clash with Premier League champions Leicester City. But to single out Pogba is to unfairly highlight an issue which is not of the Frenchman’s making at a time when United have far more deep-rooted problems to alleviate.
It was always going to be a tough task to placate all of the critics from day one after United forked out a world record £89.5 million to bring their former youth star back to Old Trafford. Many decided immediately that Pogba was a waste of money, and the first sign of anything other than magnificence was always going to instigate claims that such quickly-drawn conclusions were accurate.
And, while Pogba has undoubtedly been short of the mark required in his last three outings, some refuse to take into account the extenuating circumstances for his early struggles as part of Mourinho’s new dawn.
For a start, this is a very new United side. While Mourinho has been brought in for his ability to make an immediate impact at the top of the game, there is no escaping the fact that last season’s Manchester United were a far cry from a competitive outfit. The Portuguese has been far from infallible during their recent dip, but to categorise their run as a crisis is somewhat far-fetched as Mourinho looks to rebuild a winning model.
One of the areas the manager has yet to address adequately is the best environment for Pogba, although he has certainly tried. Against Manchester City, as in his opening two starts for United, the 23-year-old started alongside Marouane Fellaini in a dual pivot at the base of midfield, but when that didn’t stem the flow of City possession Mourinho decided to try out Pogba as a number 10 against Feyenoord.
The 1-0 defeat in Rotterdam featured a flickering but ultimately underwhelming performance from Pogba, and the 3-1 reverse at Watford which followed saw him tried out in a third role in the space of a week – to the left of a midfield trident with Fellaini at the base. The misuse of the Belgian as a hunter and gatherer had a far greater bearing on Pogba’s game than anything the Frenchman himself did and the calls for Michael Carrick to come in grew long and loud as a result.
And therein lies the greater issue. Pogba can only control so much himself and, while Mourinho has conceded that the unparalleled price tag has weighed on his star man’s mind to some degree, the inability to provide the correct environment for such a key player is perhaps the manager’s biggest failure to this point. Just as at Juventus, Pogba particularly thrived alongside Andrea Pirlo and Arturo Vidal as one dictated the pace and tempo of the game and the other took on the majority of the workload off the ball, United need to make their game work for Pogba for him to succeed.
But why can’t an £89.5m player be more adaptable, some might ask? Pogba clearly is adaptable, but if you are looking to him to dominate a game as he can and drive United to victories, then putting him in the best position to succeed has to be the primary concern. In the same way that Zlatan Ibrahimovic was slotted straight in as a number nine and wide players were encouraged to get more crosses in to supply him, Pogba must also be given the right environment to achieve something in the red shirt.
Expectation will always be there. Not only because of his status as a world-record signing but also due to the fact he is the cocky, brass type of player many onlookers love to shoot down. But, with just a little tweaking elsewhere in the midfield, Pogba can be the player he was in Italy and United can get on with addressing the more pressing concerns that are their defensive line and their misfiring captain.
In the meantime, there will be many who make it their mission to decry the money spent on Pogba and continue to blast the player himself for his failure to live up to his billing. But in truth the onlookers’ expectations need to be reconfigured far more radically than Pogba’s approach to the game.
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