For Manchester United, it is a glimpse of what might have been. When they face Tottenham Hotspur in Shanghai on Thursday, their rivals should feature a man who could have swapped clubs and plied his trade at Old Trafford last season. Toby Alderweireld’s age counted against him. Jose Mourinho wanted him, Ed Woodward did not and the Belgian instead helped Spurs reach the Champions League final.
Even with a £25 million (Dh114m) release clause, Alderweireld is not on United’s radar this year. He seems content to stay at Tottenham. But, for the second successive summer, Harry Maguire is on the wish list. They have “hit a hurdle,” in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s words, in their pursuit. Transfer-market inflation is such that United will have to pay a world-record fee for a centre-back for Leicester City to sell.
If it would create a hole in the bank balance, there would be a surfeit in another respect. While United failed to sign the central defender Mourinho wanted last summer, they already have too many. Should Maguire arrive, it would be both as the most expensive and the best of the bunch. Alderweireld, too, would have been a considerable upgrade, and not just because Spurs conceded 15 fewer league goals than United last season.
If United have quantity rather than quality, it leaves the incumbents in an internal battle to survive and the club looking for takers for men on generous contracts. If most clubs want four centre-backs and United, given their players’ injury records, may require five, they already have six. Maguire would make it seven.
Which would suggest two of Eric Bailly, Victor Lindelof, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Marcos Rojo and Axel Tuanzebe should go. The youngster Tuanzebe would be the easiest to dispose of: Aston Villa would happily take him back on loan. Yet if he were available, he would probably be gone by now and Tuanzebe’s display against Inter Milan led Solskjaer to declare: “Axel is going to be the future of this club.”
Tuanzebe should fit the role of the fifth centre-back. The spot as Maguire’s partner ought to be reserved for Victor Lindelof: a candidate for a cull 12 months ago was arguably United’s outstanding player in a troubled season. The Swede showed his stature. He forms a positive part of Mourinho’s legacy.
Which makes it two from four. Bailly had shaped up as United's best centre-back in his first 18 months at the club. Injuries, indiscipline, erratic form and a falling-out with Mourinho that made him a bit-part player have altered that impression but he has age (25) and ability in his favour. He should stay.
Most obviously, Marcos Rojo ought to leave. His tackling can be terrible, his fitness record, after 10 league starts in 27 months, little better. The bemusing element is that United contracted the Argentine until 2021 on a reported £160,000 a week.
Dispose of him, however, and United’s decision will be a familiar one: Jones or Smalling? It has been a recurring theme of the 2010s as two increasingly maligned constants have lingered, never quite realising their potential, often playing worse alongside each other than they have done when paired with others, serving as indictments of a regime where they have survived more than succeeded, providing some of the pratfalls that have pockmarked United’s history since Alex Ferguson.
It is one of the oddities of United’s planning that both were granted extended deals – Smalling to 2022, Jones to 2023 – since Mourinho’s departure. Smalling, touted by Bryan Robson as a possible captain, has seniority on his side, the superior fitness record and the better form in the last two seasons; his display away at Paris Saint-Germain was perhaps his best in a United shirt.
Jones may have more ability and, at 27, more longevity, but Smalling has usurped him in their private rivalry and Maguire has displaced him as England’s buccaneeringly likeable centre-back. Get Maguire and Jones should join Rojo at the exit.
