Scouting expert: James Garner making right decision to leave Manchester United
We’re delighted to welcome Football Manager’s Wolves researcher Dave Azzopardi as our exclusive columnist. Each week the scouting expert will be giving his views on the biggest talking points on Wonderkids across the UK…
Manchester United midfielder James Garner is making the right decision to leave the club if he wants to play regular minutes, according to Dave Azzopardi.
The 21-year-old academy graduate is expected to leave Old Trafford on a permanent deal this summer according to The Athletic [August 15], after he wasn’t given assurances over regular first-team football this season.
But after being part of the successful Nottingham Forest side last season that earned promotion, Azzopardi says that he must look elsewhere if that’s the case and believes it’s the right thing for his development.
“It’s a difficult decision,” he told The Football Wonderkids.
“Obviously, United at the moment I don’t know what’s going on because it’s so obvious that that midfield area, that holding midfield area especially, is an area they’ve got to address.
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“They messed around all pre-season and all summer trying to sign De Jong and now they’re looking at Rabiot, which I don’t think addresses or strengthens that area whatsoever.
“Garner needs to make a decision. A player of that age, a talented player, he wants to be getting regular game time and playing 75 mins plus.
“I think he could do it for a lower end Premier League team if he wanted to, but for the good of his career he needs to be playing.
“We’ve had a couple of players in recent years, such as Dean Henderson at Man United. He’s come out and said he wishes he never stayed on the bench at Man United and he wasted a year of his career.
“A player of that age, unless he knows he’s going to get guaranteed minutes at Manchester United then he needs to look elsewhere and try to get another good loan spell under his belt.”
In other Manchester United news, Hannibal Mejbri is set to join Birmingham City on a season-long loan