The acceptable face of desperation
Signing Casemiro is a very good idea – but wanting to sell James Garner is madness
It’s hard to know where to begin this week. With the humiliation of losing 4-0 at Brentford? The sheer desperation of wanting to buy Adrien Rabiot? Or the sheer derangement of wanting to sell James Garner?
Let’s start instead by accentuating the positive. United have signed Casemiro from Real Madrid. After having two terrible ideas in a row – Rabiot and Marko Arnautovic – they have suddenly had a very good one. If this too is desperation, it’s the acceptable face of it.
Casemiro is the sort of midfielder United’s rickety defence has been crying out for. He’s as firm a foundation as Fabinho or Fernandinho – in fact, he keeps them both out of the Brazil team. He may take time to adjust to the Premier League, but he has seen off a few English teams in Europe and he has a ready-made partnership with Fred, also a first choice for Brazil (yes, really). He will bring high standards, which should be infectious as he is popular with his team-mates. (When it became clear that Casemiro was leaving Madrid, Toni Kroos sent him a love-letter and signed it ‘your Toni’.) He has the ability to boss a game from the back, an unfamiliar sight at Old Trafford since Michael Carrick’s last full season, six long years ago. Some pundits are muttering that £60m is a lot of money to spend on a veteran, but the money is there and Casemiro is 30, not 35 like some recruits we could mention.
His arrival tells us one thing for sure: he’s a brave man. The team he is joining have just gone from a mess to a shambles. Faced with a friendly start to the season – two fixtures that they won last year – United somehow contrived to lose both, to be outplayed twice, to let in six goals and to score just once, via an own goal. This is where they’re at now: even the easy games are hard.
Most new managers bring a bounce, and Erik ten Hag did too – it’s just that it faded away before he even reached the end of pre-season. He won his first three warm-ups, then drew two and lost one of the rest. His time in charge has already taken on the shape of too many United flops: sparkling success giving way to turgid mediocrity and finally abject failure.
Just when he could do with a break, the fixture list is about to get tougher. In the next nine weeks United face all the other members of the Big Six. Ten Hag’s challenge is to make sure he is the next Mikel Arteta (making an awful start to a season, but keeping calm and carrying on with a thoughtful rebuild), rather than the next Frank de Boer – a former Ajax manager trying to bring the Ajax way to the Premier League, losing his first four games and getting the sack after a month of competitive action.
So far Ten Hag has been a mixed bag. He has made two very promising signings (Christian Eriksen as well as Casemiro), given the team a shape and an identity (pace, pressing, quick short passes), refused to join the cult of Cristiano Ronaldo, and got some joy out of Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford (only in pre-season, alas). But he has also wasted a lot of time wooing someone who clearly doesn’t fancy United (Frenkie de Jong), backed a fading old-school goalkeeper (David de Gea) over a commanding modern one (Dean Henderson), reappointed an unconvincing captain (Harry Maguire) when there’s a classy figurehead to hand (Rafael Varane), and dragged the players into Carrington on a Sunday to do an eight-mile run, which was more of a punishment for their families than for them.
Ten Hag has also, alarmingly, made one unforced error twice: putting Lisandro Martinez up against a tall striker – first Danny Welbeck, who used to play for United, then Ivan Toney, who should be on their shopping list now. Just when it looked as if the long ball might leave the Premier League, with Burnley relegated and Roy Hodgson retired, Ten Hag is doing his best to bring it back. His insistence on playing a man of 5ft 9in at centre-back is an invitation to United's opponents to resort to route one – though probably not tonight, as Darwin Nunez is thankfully banned. If Martinez starts against Liverpool, it has to be in the role Casemiro will occupy from next weekend, as a midfield destroyer.
Selling Garner could be the biggest blunder of the lot. Of all United’s bright young things, he is the most developed, after playing 60 games for Nottingham Forest and shining in FA Cup ties against Arsenal, Leicester and Liverpool. He plays through balls from deep, he gets forward enough to score goals himself, he takes immaculate corners, he has captained both United and England at youth level. He should be in the starting XI tonight, lining up next to Martinez, one of McFred and Eriksen in the sort of emergency midfield that Carrick deployed at Chelsea in November – three holders and one playmaker, though with Garner you get both in the same elegant package.
After tonight he should be playing at least half United’s games, learning from the best – picking up the defensive side of the job from Casemiro and the creative side from Eriksen. Antonio Conte is reported to want to grab him for Spurs, which says it all. Garner is going to be a star. Does Ten Hag really mean to let him slip through his fingers, the way De Gea did with that early shot at Brentford?
Tim de Lisle writes about sport for The Guardian. If you’re on Twitter, do follow him and United Writing.