Martial’s Future

Red Warrior

Red Warrior

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I'm starting to think that Martial's days are numbered at Utd. It's clear now JM prefers Sanchez LF/LW/LM so where does that leave Martial? I can see him wanting to go.
 
It's hard to tell where he fits in the picture I still think our strongest team on paper has him as the left sided player with Sanchez central and Mata on the right but the form of Lingard this season has meant it is hard to leave him out.

Martial for me is a fine player but he isn't a superstar yet he's still inconsistent which is why he isn't a nailed on starter, if he left I don't think he'd go to a big club and be an instant starter. The issue is for how long can he sit tight especially with Rashford also around.

I personally think he's a guy that Mourinho would listen to offers for if it meant he could use that money to strengthen elsewhere, Martial's best hope is learning the right forward position but he's a guy who's always played central as a young player and you can see that in some parts of his game.

I think Martial suits a team who have lots of possession and are on the front foot most of the time where he doesn't really have to do much defending other than pressing, whereas Mourinho in big games looks to start deep and play on the counter which means Martial spends a lot of time a long way from goal.
 
I think your right that Jose looks at Martial as an extra £50m he could use but he has always said he wont force anyone to leave, but I think Martial may be looking and thinking he might not get the minutes he wants over the next 2 years with Sanchez here.

I still think we should keep Martial left and put Sanchez centre or right which would solve our rw/rm problem.
 
I think you have to look at it and say Utd will play 50 games a season and a player like Martial can probably expect to start 25 of them and if he stays fit would probably feature in at least 40 of them.

It really all depends on what him and his agent are asking for if they expect Martial to go up with the top earners on £300k a week he probably gets sold as he's not there yet if he's happy to sign for 5 more years at £150k with the knowledge that if he kicks on the club will offer him another deal in 2 years time then maybe the club can talk.

My position on Martial is if we put him up for sale tomorrow would Barca/Madrid/Juve/PSG be coming into with 100m euro offers for him? Probably not. There was talk last summer of a loan move to Sevilla for this season so we have a few options could we given him a new deal then let him go on loan somewhere for a season where he will play more?

Do we simply let him go? but the sort of clubs who will come in for him I don't think will be offering us what we've paid which currently stands at 70m euro (50m euro transfer fee plus 2 of the 3 10m euro bonus payments). I mean making a loss on him would feel gutting considering he's had 2 good seasons with the club.

The challenge to Martial is be better than Sanchez if you want to play for Man Utd then you have to be a top player you won't just be handed the shirt you have to earn it and fight tooth and nail to keep hold of it, don't just let the new guy take it from you fight him for it.

My worry is does he feel like he's going a bit stale and needs a reboot sort of take 1 step backwards to take 2 steps forward at the end of his first season he was the future for the French national team now 2 years later it's 50/50 if he'll make the world cup squad. I wonder if he's just not a guy who fits with the manager and if the club got the right sort of offer let him go but it's very hard to read how Mourinho feels about his players we know he loves Matic/Valencia/Young and he clearly hates Shaw but everyone else it's quite hard to read how he feels about them.
 
If we sell Martial to get Bale as the rumours suggest, I don't see the point.

Bale is clearly the better player, but at 21/22 was he? Bale will improve the first team and get goals too, but injuries are real concern. Bale doesn't like playing off the right so we would be buying him a direct replacement for Martial and I'm not sure I see the point.

But if we are saying we have enough on the left, sell Martial for Kroos or someone of that calibre in another position I can kind of see the point. No point having a 50m player who isn't going to play.
 
I don't think we should be buying Bale either but someone probably needs to go from the attacking line up in the summer I thought that would probably be Mata but he is the only one currently who can play on the right as it seems clear that Sanchez will be used either from the left or central which is where he played for Arsenal. I think he's wasted on the right for the same reason Martial/Rashford are as they aren't strong on the left foot and none of them are really wingers who want to go outside and cross a ball.

It would be a massive gamble but should Utd loan out 1 of Martial or Rashford next season? I personally think it could be really good for their development if they landed at the right club but it would be a bit of a PR nightmare for the club.

Ideally another season under their belts and the penny drops for them like it has previously with other players and suddenly that consistency that is lacking comes and they go from promising youngster to outright superstar.
 
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Bouhafsi is usually pretty reliable too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, Martial has been in and out of the side and he looks like the type that would sulk bad if he wasn’t playing every week. He is still a terrific talent but maybe he just thinks he won’t be first choice while we have Sanchez.

Wonder how much we could recoup for him? I am guessing we would get somewhere near what we paid for him in this current climate. Could be a Real Madrid signing for sure.
 
He's probably our most talented attacker but doesn't produce enough for Mourinho's liking. Sanchez is more persistent in his attacking, he hasn't had the best of starts but his dribbles per game are triple what Martial does, Rashford isn't much more but I feel he's more of a constant threat. I think Martial has a tendency to go missing during games on the left. I prefer him and Rashford in the middle but they're not Mourinho type strikers but I do think Mourinho could do more to give both game time there especially when we're comfortable and Lukaku could do with a break. We need depth but if we're not going to give that depth the game time during the rest of the season they are going to leave. I think Martial's other problem under Mourinho is that he's not a tireless runner like Sanchez or Rashford. Against Swansea the other week we saw Sanchez sprint back to win possession at left back running past Young, you wouldn't see Martial do that and that's an issue for Mourinho.

It'd be a great shame to see him go as he could be really great for us but I feel it's him or Rashford now Sanchez is here. Neither him or Rashford have shown enough as right sided players which is a shame as that's where the opening in the front 3 is. If he does go, I hope we bring in someone who can offer more than the current crop on the right.
 
If he wants to go that is fine it's clear the manager doesn't see him as first choice but we've paid 70m euro for him so far including add ons and if we don't get at least that money back heads will surely roll over the deal that was done to sign him. I think he's given it a go under Jose but he's just not his type of player so he will always find himself on the bench for the big games, if he wants to go and we can get a player who does what the manager wants the I think we might just have to accept that.

70m euro makes him a potential signing for CL clubs like Juventus or Bayern on the continent but I don't see the big hitters in Barca, Madrid or PSG coming in so if we want our money back would we have to potentially sell domestically as top PL clubs can spend these sort of transfer fees now. The only other club who might have that sort of wedge to spend could be Atletico if they sell Griezmann this summer which seems likely but I don't see Martial being the sort of player Simeone would want. Dortmund maybe an option but I think the fee might be a bit to much for them even if they do still have the Dembele & Aubameyang money sitting in the bank.

Could we potentially use him as a bargaining chip in a player trade deal like we did with Mkhitaryan? I wonder if these player exchange deals might become more common with fees becoming so high now making the FFP stuff very tricky a straight swap is basically a nil transaction for FFP.
 
I do think that if he became available Madrid would be interested, along with PSG. Probably not Barca but I do think there would be a lot of interest.

The bargaining chip idea is an interesting one, it worked out well for all parties in the Mkhi/Sanchez deal but there is a lot of factors involved to make those deals happen. Say if Juventus were interested, could we use Martial in a deal to get Dybala? Potentially. Then Martial has got to think will he thrive in Italy?
 
SuperRash said:
I do think that if he became available Madrid would be interested, along with PSG. Probably not Barca but I do think there would be a lot of interest.

The bargaining chip idea is an interesting one, it worked out well for all parties in the Mkhi/Sanchez deal but there is a lot of factors involved to make those deals happen. Say if Juventus were interested, could we use Martial in a deal to get Dybala? Potentially. Then Martial has got to think will he thrive in Italy?
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I think Alex Sandro might be a bigger possibility. Dybala is an absolutely brilliant 10 but do we need one? Nice to have better than what we've got but feel that if an attacker was to come in, it would be someone to play on the right.
 
SuperRash said:
I do think that if he became available Madrid would be interested, along with PSG. Probably not Barca but I do think there would be a lot of interest.

The bargaining chip idea is an interesting one, it worked out well for all parties in the Mkhi/Sanchez deal but there is a lot of factors involved to make those deals happen. Say if Juventus were interested, could we use Martial in a deal to get Dybala? Potentially. Then Martial has got to think will he thrive in Italy?
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He has scored 36 goals in 131 games for Utd in Europe it's 5 in 27 the top clubs tend to look at your CL record rather than domestic record that's good but not 70m euro good and he's not really better than what the big spenders like Barca, PSG & Madrid already have. You would assume if they're going for attacking talent this summer it'll be for more established big names like Griezmann, Lewendowski or Hazard and PSG have already made their big signing in Mbappe for this summer.

Martial needs to go to a club where he feels he can be the number one bit like Depay does he need to take a step backwards to try and take 2 steps forward. I still think the thing that makes sense is get him to sign for 2 more years to take his contract to 2022 and let him go on loan somewhere next season to play more games. The sort of clubs where he could take that step back and be the big fish in a smaller pond and develop like Atletico, Dortmund or Lyon are probably the sort of clubs who can't afford his transfer fee and wages so it becomes a bit tricky for him.

This is where Utd's lack of sporting director is an issue because selling him is a situation that could have a long term effect on the club whereas the manager can only ever think short term.
 
Agree with the above. I think he needs to go somewhere where he's the #1 in his position. He wouldn't be that at PSG. It'd be a surprise to see him go to Real or Barca.

Douglas Costa is currently on loan at Juve and has 4 goals in 38, they have an option to buy him for €40m this summer but you'd have to feel he'd be a big improvement on him and Mandzukic in their attack.
 
We've paid a lot for him way before the transfer market really went boom so with that in mind we should still get a good fee for him. If not I'd take either a swap for someone we need or a lesser fee that includes a buy back option. The fact of the matter is United won't do an Arsenal and hope he signs on while all the time his just running his contract down and making a potential transfer fee smaller and smaller. It will be if we sell him, sell him now and get the best deal we can for the club.

I'm not going to slag him off because he has done some great things and scored some big goals for us in his short period of time here but his never really done anything to consistently to make him "undroppable". For both LVG or Jose to be fair. But it's that word potential that worries everyone and none of really know if there's a top top player in him or just a good one and therefore panic we are losing the next star.

I'm not saying it for the sake of it but given the choice of the two I'd rather see what Rashord turns into then Martial. So if Martial leaves and Rashford stays longer term I'd be happy. Looking at the bigger picture I'd swap Martial for a proper stand out pacey full back either side, or a world class centre midfielder at this moment in time.
 
Realistically, I feel Jose will play 4-3-3 a lot more next season so we need a WC right sided player so i would be happy to sacrifice Martial for a player to fit in there. Lingard isn't good enough and Mata has no pace so I wouldn't want them there.

Rashford is 2 years behind Martial so he may want to hang about to replace Sanchez when he is 31/32. A big ask for him to play understudy for that long though.
 
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He was being linked to Bayern Munich as well last night.

I really don't see him being here next season just feels like this one is over as him and the manager don't work well together.

Look forward to us taking a big loss on one of the best young talents in Europe.
 
I think he's another one with a dodgy attitude. He could be excellent but he just doesn't do it enough, and when he is not doing it he does nothing else, it's like being a man down. We need players who when they are not on it, put in a shift.
 
It's another case of Mourinho only wanting to work with one type of personality he doesn't know how to motivate people like Martial or possibly even Pogba or Shaw who people put these same criticisms against. He wants footballers who perform like robots and stick to a task and don't let emotions effect their game but that isn't football a club will have different types of people and good managers will know how to get everyone fired up.

Not everyone needs to be beasted in the way Mourinho seems to operate and similarly not everyone needs to be cuddled you have to use different methods to motivate different people to get the best out of everyone.

If they can't work together I accept things probably have to change but I guess we will never know how things really are behind the scenes and Martial at 22 needs to be in a team where he plays every week. Is he another one who made the move to the big club to quickly trying to skip a step which seems to happen to a lot of youngsters now.
 
It sounds like you are saying Mourinho is not a good manager, whereas his record doesn't reflect that.

I think Mourinho wants people who care, and put effort in, and there is nothing wrong with that. Celebrating a derby win like it actually means something is a joke. Why would you call them robots, that sounds derogatory when he wants them to do their job. Like all good managers. Pep is quick to drop players who don't do their role too. It's the managers job to do that.

Are you saying you are happy with Pogba at 90m. That one week he can perform for 45 mins, the next week he is awful. Lukaku/Matic stays in the side because no matter how off their game they are, they try, they work and they put the team first.

Martial needs to be in a team where he plays every week. Then he needs to play better and put a shift in. Because he is not getting in m team every week, nor is Pogba. Lingard, not as good player as them, he starts he for me because he works and I know I can rely on him, same as Mata, Herrera, Rashford. Even Sanchez, at least you can see he is trying.

I've got to say, living in France, Pogba and Martial show a typical French attitude towards work.
 
Mr C said:
Martial needs to be in a team where he plays every week. Then he needs to play better and put a shift in.
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And this will probably happen, he will leave at the end of the season, go play every week at a club smaller than Utd, and in 3 or 4 years time we'll be buying him back for £200m.

But this is Jose's way, he wants ready made talent, not guy's he need to put time and effort in with.
 
Red Warrior said:
And this will probably happen, he will leave at the end of the season, go play every week at a club smaller than Utd, and in 3 or 4 years time we'll be buying him back for £200m.

But this is Jose's way, he wants ready made talent, not guy's he need to put time and effort in with.
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do you think he does enough to warrant a starting place? I'm not sure he does, and if he is not willing to knuckle down what should we do? let the players pick the team by not signing contracts?

Jose doesn't want ready made talent, he plays Rashford, he plays Martial, he plays Mctominay. Jose wants consistency and effort.

I think it's more the players want the rewards without the effort. If you're referring to De Bruyne and Salah at Chelsea, neither were good enough at that time. They went away, got experience at smaller teams. I mean Salah, no one except Liverpool were interested were they?

Jose can't do anything about players who want to play every week but aren't good enough yet and want to leave.

Martial isn't a starter for me. I don't understand why Rashford doesn't start more though.

Sometimes players do need to go away and get experience at clubs like United just can't afford to do. I'd like to see Martial and Rashford sign new deals and maybe go on loan for a year. But they won't do that.
 
I agree with that from Mr C.

Another example would be the situation with Lukaku who's played almost week in week out even when he wasn't scoring. He wasn't very well at the weekend but still played. There's other forwards waiting to play. But Jose trusts him and Rom is doing what Jose wants all the time. At any club in the world you only play if your doing what your manager wants. And Jose wants work rate, determination and effort above anything. Is Martial bring any of those to the table at this moment in time? I dont think he is.

From the outside looking in which we all are, press included, it looks more likely from his personality that Rashord will roll up his sleeves up and come back a better player then Martial despite them both being dropped recently. And its players like that we need at this football club. We are nobodies stepping stone. This is Manchester United and if you dont have the mental strength to take knocks and come back a better player then its not the club for you. The best thing Martial can do at this moment in time is come out and put a 10/10 performance in, sign that new deal and show Jose his here to stay. Jose will respond to players that have that desire. Look at Ashley Young 12 months ago he nearly got sold to China in January. His playing all the time now and is arguably back in that England squad for Russia. There's a rope there but Martial has to want to climb it.
 
To be quite honest I'm not fussed if he stays or goes. If Sanchez continues to play the left like it looks like he is going to I'd be more than happy to sell him and spend that money on a right forward/midfielder to balance us out up top.
 
Mr C said:
It sounds like you are saying Mourinho is not a good manager, whereas his record doesn't reflect that.

I think Mourinho wants people who care, and put effort in, and there is nothing wrong with that. Celebrating a derby win like it actually means something is a joke. Why would you call them robots, that sounds derogatory when he wants them to do their job. Like all good managers. Pep is quick to drop players who don't do their role too. It's the managers job to do that.

Are you saying you are happy with Pogba at 90m. That one week he can perform for 45 mins, the next week he is awful. Lukaku/Matic stays in the side because no matter how off their game they are, they try, they work and they put the team first.

Martial needs to be in a team where he plays every week. Then he needs to play better and put a shift in. Because he is not getting in m team every week, nor is Pogba. Lingard, not as good player as them, he starts he for me because he works and I know I can rely on him, same as Mata, Herrera, Rashford. Even Sanchez, at least you can see he is trying.

I've got to say, living in France, Pogba and Martial show a typical French attitude towards work.
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I think he is a good manager but he is only willing to work with people that share his attitude to certain things which is fine there are a lot of managers who are the same but I would question why he's signing players like Pogba & Mhiki who were known as being a bit "soft" when he knows he isn't really able to work with them. I mean can you imagine Mourinho trying to manage Eric Cantona? Before anyone says what about Zlatan you have to remember Zlatan is a 100% dedicated pro footballer all that dare to Zlatan stuff is just PR stuff to do with his brand on the pitch and training he is 100% focused like Beckham or Ronaldo.

I'm saying that I'm pretty happy with Pogba over the 2 seasons he's been at the club I think he's had more good games than bad and plenty of average ones in their as well forget what he cost or what he earns and judge him against the other players at the club. He's contributed more to our success in 2 season than Carrick, Fellaini or Herrera have and I'd say this season despite injury and bad form since January he's still been our best CM this season. Matic has had some big dips in his form as well which is something he's escaping criticism for a lot.

Martial is a kid Ronaldo's first 3 seasons at times he was incredibly frustrating and we all said the same things he's a show off, not a team player, not consistent, doesn't work hard, doesn't score enough, doesn't assist enough then the penny drops and he became a 20 goal player then a 30 goal player then a 40 goal player and now he's hitting 50+ a season every season for got knows how long. I'm not saying Martial could become Ronaldo that's a ludicrous level to set him but I think we've done the hard bit so is now the time to give up on him? Look at how Sterling & Sane have errupted this season and gone to another level and became genuine world class talent. Does he have the work ethic of a Ronaldo or a Zlatan or a Beckham who knows we don't know how he trains we know he comes off as quite relaxed and chill but for all we know he's staying behind after training and off the pitch he seems to keep a pretty low profile most of his social media stuff is just him hanging out with his kid.

I assume you share the same attitude towards work as the French now you've moved there :p but removing the stereotype there are plenty of French players who work their nuts off on the pitch Kante, Matuidi & Griezmann are two examples so not all French players are lazy. Martial for me falls into the Depay or Shaw bracket of player in that I'm not sure he's 100% focused all the time but these are young kids with plenty of distraction your job as a manager is to focus them on their football not just give up on them. Again we don't know how many chances he's given them or if this is even fair criticism.

Mourinho I don't think is a guy who's prepared to work with players who test his patience if you give him your 100% attention and listen to all his instructions and do exactly as you are told you will be fine but if you are more of a free spirit you will probably bang heads with him.

Manager nearly always wins in these situations but I'd rather we loaned out Martial for a season to play more regularly at another top club than sell him the only way I'd sell him is if we got a stupid offer the worry is we end up selling for less than we already paid.
 
still not quite grabbed the two hour lunch break, much to the dismay of the locals :)

I think he would have been ok with Eric, like you say he worked hard, stayed late to train and was 100% reliable.

But I agree he is not prepared to work with people who test his patience, but I'm not sure many would. I also think, given the chance he'd like to keep Martial, but he won't just play him because he might leave. He picks the players he think will do the job and rightly so. If Martial thinks he would be better off elsewhere then there is not a lot we can do.

Pogba however, I wonder if Jose would like to bin him given the chance as he should be dominating games.
 
Thing is, with Martial, I feel he needs a good run in the team to get some consistency. Unfortunately if the kid does something wrong or has half a bad game he's dropped. Sanchez and Matic, for example can have many games on the trot but not get dropped.

There is something about Martial's body language though, he kinda reminds me of Berbatov in that he looks lazy and disinterested all the time. Is that just how he looks or how he actually is?
 
It would seem that experienced players who have bad games don't get dropped Young & Matic being obvious ones but the youngsters under Jose have it harder, it's probably because he trusts the experienced guys not to make the same mistakes again.

The attacking line up has been a joke under Mourinho as far as I'm concerned he's been spoiled for choice in wide areas and 2 years in he still doesn't know what his best attacking line up is. He's had his centre forward sorted in both seasons but the wide positions and the number 10 have been chopped and changed every game and then during games. No one has been able to nail down one of those starting spots as their own because a dodgy 60 minutes gets you subbed and then normally dropped for the next game when you come on for the guy who came on for you last week.

My guess is Jose has been told he's got X million in the budget for the summer and if he wants more he has to sell and Martial is someone he thinks he can get big money for which will help him in other areas. I think we are probably 1 player heavy in the attacking positions and the logical one to sell is probably Martial.
 
But Jose said he wants to keep Martial, I think it's more Martial wants to leave.
 
I don't think we can afford to let him go to be honest. Anyone know if he's definitely out of contract in 2020 or if we have a clause we can trigger for a 1 year extension?

We just have so many bodies moving on in defence and midfield that we have to focus on them. Start next season with the same front 4 and perhaps one addition on the right wing.

I don't think we really have too many bodies either.

Lingard
Mata
Lukaku
Sanchez
Martial
Rashford

That's 6 players fighting over 3/4 positions. If 1 comes in. 7 players fighting for 3/4 positions. Martial and Rashford aren't just back up to Sanchez they're back up to Lukaku. If Lukaku gets an injury one of them comes in. What one of them really needs to be doing is working out how they can transfer their skills to the right hand side of the pitch. At the moment if Sanchez/Lukaku get injured how do we line up?

Martial Rashford Mata in a 4-3-3

--------------------------------
Martial Mata Lingard

Rashford in a 4-2-3-1

Let Martial go and only bring in a right winger and injuries to them two would leave us very exposed. As our only back up to CF and LW would be the same player.
 
@IDFD the 2020 includes the 1 year option he signed on a 4+1 deal in 2015.

Utd seemed keen to enter talks this season but we don’t know what him and his agent were asking for and it seems that there’s talk on a lot of new deals for players that have stalled.
 
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