Marcus Rashford could ‘humiliate’ Ruben Amorim and Manchester United in the same way Chelsea stand to be ’embarrassed’ by their trio of loan cast-offs.
These loanees could well finish above their parent clubs this season. How mortifying.
Marcus Rashford
“It’s not embarrassing,” said Ruben Amorim. “When you loan a player you expect him to play and to improve, so there is nothing humiliating there. I understand the question but I am just focused on my players, that’s all. When the window closes, I will be really focused on just our team and to improve our team.”
It does feel as though keeping the scorer of three of the first four Premier League goals of the manager’s nascent reign might have helped a little in that regard but that particular bridge has been incinerated and submerged, leaving only a convoluted footpath to Aston Villa.
Amorim had his reasons for ostracising Rashford and has explained them in painstaking, often unnecessarily demeaning detail. Those ties have been cut so cleanly that Manchester United would prefer for the forward to find his feet in Birmingham so as to increase the chances and value of a summer sale.
But Amorim is kidding himself if he thinks it would not reflect abysmally on the club if their decision to actively weaken their attack is compounded by Rashford helping stabilise Villa’s season. It would be no shock if he outdoes the combined efforts of the remaining centre-forwards at Old Trafford from here.
Jadon Sancho
Amorim can at least plead innocence in the case of Sancho, although it does not require the wildest imagination to envisage another one-sided clash between manager and player if the two ever become properly acquainted.
Chelsea’s Sancho hype train has certainly slowed, if not yet ground to a shuddering halt. He has no goals and one assist in his last 10 appearances and was taken off after 52 minutes of the West Ham win for goalscorer Pedro Neto.
Yet only Amad and Bruno Fernandes have more combined goals and assists in the Premier League so far this season than the inaugural member of this expensive Manchester United attacking loan army, the “amazing bargain” who can sometimes be lost in the Stamford Bridge shuffle.
It seems pointless referring to it as ‘an obligation to buy’ considering Chelsea feel obliged to sign anything cognisant, but the Sancho deal will be made permanent for £25m if the Blues finish no lower than 14th – currently a place below Manchester United. Amorim’s shambles can catch up if they pick up 14 points from as many matches while Enzo Maresca’s side would need to lose all their remaining games, and it is hilariously damning that the latter is more likely.
Raheem Sterling
If Rashford is worth a £40m option and Sancho is tied to a £25m deal, where does that leave the considerably older and in far worse form Sterling?
It was supposed to be a piece of beautifully opportunism which exposed the deficiencies in Chelsea’s risible transfer approach while providing Arsenal with another leg-up to the title.
But the football has very much left a player who fell unexpectedly high upwards and has failed to capitalise on the chance that presented. Sterling’s solitary goal in 17 games was in the third round of the Carabao against League One side Bolton. Jakub Kiwior has played more often this season and Ethan Nwaneri is close behind. His three Premier League starts have lasted an average of 52 minutes.
Chelsea still handled the situation dreadfully in the summer but from a pure, cold and hard business perspective they absolutely nailed a call that baffled most, even if they did lend Sterling to one of the few clubs who will finish above them.
Neto
It is closer than most will have expected when the deal was done shortly before the summer deadline but Arsenal will indeed hand Neto back down to Bournemouth upon the end of his loan. By then the keeper will probably still have played more games for the Cherries (three) than the Gunners (one) this season, despite leaving the former for the latter in August.
Kepa
Less predictable – although the world’s most expensive goalkeeper did express a desire to “win something” under Andoni Iraola when he joined – was Bournemouth locking themselves in a fight for Champions League qualification against your Chelseas, your Newcastles, your Manchester Citys and especially your Nottingham Forests of this world.
Kepa has been crucial to that and salvaged at least some of a reputation which was systematically destroyed across five seasons at Stamford Bridge, keeping more clean sheets in 17 league games than Robert Sanchez and Filip Jorgensen have mustered between them in 24.
He will absolutely either be loaned back out again next season, or become a liability once more when he dons those cursed Chelsea gloves.
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Axel Disasi
Not even an earnest chat with Ange Postecoglou could have convinced Disasi despite Spurs trying twice. The defender had agreed personal terms with Aston Villa and to anyone not named Fabian Delph that means something.
It is fundamentally hilarious that Chelsea preferred to shift a player across to their bitter rivals in north London rather than Villa, but also entirely understandable. Disasi, despite all available Premier League evidence thus far, is a £38.8m centre-half who ostensibly improves a rival for Champions League qualification.
Villa certainly needed it, with Ezri Konsa very possibly their best available option at both right-back and centre-half. Disasi’s last start, the Ipswich debacle in December, would suggest that is very much still the case but he should surely help alleviate some of the pressure.
Alex Moreno
Not the first player to ultimately lose a jostle for position against Lucas Digne and surely not the last. Moreno surrendered his starting place at Villa to injuries as much as anything else and Nottingham Forest offered a fresh start in the summer.
The Spaniard cannot have foreseen his loan club’s journey since then and can take pride in the part he initially played, but Neco Williams has produced career-best form from December onwards to reduce Moreno to a role as chief cheerleader, which it must be said he seems to revel in.
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