Since the talismanic Cristiano Ronaldo departed Old Trafford for the Santiago Bernabeu in the summer of 2009, no Manchester United winger has managed to score 10 league goals in a single season.
The lack of goals from midfield has taken its toll on the team, and although Sir Alex Ferguson achieved moderate success in the last four years of his reign, with two league titles and a Champions League runners-up medal the highlights of the period, the quality of football United played took a considerable turn for the worse, with the club’s success largely down to Ferguson’s, rather than the players’, brilliance.
The consequences of the club’s decline became fully evident during David Moyes’ reign, when a lack of quality across the squad made goals, and subsequently wins, hard to come by, eventually costing Moyes his job. It left his successor, Louis van Gaal, the task of overhauling a squad devoid in quality across the park, with the wingers a particularly impoverished area.
United have missed famous, iconic wingers
Despite being famed for their dazzling dribblers over the years - George Best, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, to name a few - Manchester United failed to find a winger of similar calibre since the sale of Ronaldo to Real Madrid until Angel Di Maria came along from the same club last summer.
Luis Nani never reached the level many hoped he would, whilst the failure of the likes of Gabriel Obertan and Bebe to make the grade must surely be blamed on poor scouting, a trait that plagued the club during the latter years of Ferguson’s reign, a large factor behind the recent decline in quality of players at United’s disposal.
Antonio Valencia and Ashley Young are still at the club, but neither have displayed the consistency to suggest that they are the sorts of players that United can rely on to drive them forward in the title race, in the same way Eden Hazard did for Chelsea last season, for example.
A key reason behind Valencia’s failure to regularly deliver is the one-dimensional nature to his game, as defenders quickly worked out the limitations of his much weaker left foot.
Valencia too predicatable
His signature move - a drop of the shoulder before taking the ball onto his right foot - also quickly became his only move, and attacks down the right through Valencia soon became as predictable in the football world as Chelsea sacking managers or Arsenal making the top four, with the Ecuadorian left destitute of ideas whenever full backs showed him inside onto his left foot.
It is a similar problem that troubles Juan Mata, and despite the Spaniard’s obvious talent, the limitations to his game ultimately hold him back and prevent him from truly fitting into the current Manchester United team.
In the 4-3-3 system that Louis van Gaal deploys, the wingers are required to make runs in behind the defensive line, both with and without the ball, in order to stretch the pitch. As Pep Guardiola once said about his own 4-3-3 at Bayern “who are our unstoppable guys? The wide guys - Ribery and Robben. We have to use that weapon, we have to push the whole team upfield in order to release Robben and Ribery. They can’t be dropping deep to start the play.”
Mata too slow in unnatural wing position
Guardiola recognises the importance of pushing his two wingers as high up the field as possible, because without that vertical depth, the team becomes too congested and flat in the middle of the park, thus making it harder to play between the lines and break the opposition down.
This ultimately is why Juan Mata cannot, in the long-term, nail down the right wing slot at Manchester United. He not only lacks the speed to make penetrating runs in behind, but also the agility and control in tight areas to beat a full back one on one. His left-footed nature also makes it difficult for him to swing dangerous crosses in from the right, as the full back can easily show him onto his right foot, safe in the knowledge that Mata will struggle to beat him round the outside.
Unless the opposition full-back has a bad game or is played in a system which Mata can exploit - the 2-1 victory against Liverpool’s 3-4-3 last season, for example, where Mata scored a brace - Manchester United will have a tough time with the Spaniard out wide.
Mata has moments of brilliance and matches where he sets the world alight, but the type of player he is means he is unlikely to regularly perform from the right wing. At the end of the day, this is not a sustainable method of attack and certainly not one consistent enough to win them the league.
Luckily, the future seems brighter and the figure of hope comes in the shape of a young Dutchman, Memphis Depay, whose signing from PSV was officially confirmed on Friday. With 22 goals in 30 games last season in the Eredivisie, Depay will certainly be confident of making the 10 goal landmark his predecessors have failed to reach.
His numbers read pretty impressively for a 21-year old; 39 goals and 18 assists in 90 Eredivisie appearances in total, and if senior figures at Manchester United are to be believed, Depay is still nowhere near reaching his full potential.
Depay could answer United's winger troubles
It’s quite fitting that Depay’s boyhood idol is Cristiano Ronaldo, a Manchester United legend, and indeed the Real Madrid star is the player Depay hopes to emulate at Old Trafford. The raw ability is certainly there; the Dutchman possesses rapid speed and a thunderous shot, just like Ronaldo, as well as the ability to dip into his box of tricks in order to beat a defender.
Also, much like his Portuguese idol, Depay is a lethal threat from dead-ball situations. According to Sky Sports, Depay scored six direct free kicks from 29 attempts last season, compared to just one success from the same number of shots by Cristiano Ronaldo in the same period.
Complimenting Depay on the other wing will be Angel Di Maria, who has not quite hit the heights expected of him since his British transfer record move from Real Madrid in 2014. His talent is obvious - you need to look no further than his man of the match performance for Real in the 2014 Champions League final against Atletico Madrid to see what the Argentinian is capable of - but it’s now a matter of showcasing that ability and beginning to repay the £59.7m Manchester United splashed out on him.
Supporters of Di Maria will argue that many players take time to settle in a new country and a new league, especially one as fast-paced as the Premier League, and that his mental state was hardly helped by a home burglary in February this year.
His troubled start in England on a personal level may go some way to explaining his substandard form in a Manchester United shirt, and supporters who have followed him for years will know that his disappointing performances last season were very much the exception, not the rule.
Di Maria must be given chance to shine at United
Unfortunately, football fans have very short memories and as Di Maria moves into his second year, he’ll be expected to deliver. Excuses will be quickly forgotten and patience will run dry if he fails to perform.
At his best, Di Maria is capable of beating any defender one on one. He has the trickery to leave defenders flat-footed, but also the creativity to create a good goalscoring opportunity once he has beaten his man, shown clearly by his 10 assists in 20 league starts last season, a figure that could have been even higher had United’s strikers been more clinical.
There are few better sights in football than seeing a tricky winger drive purposefully at his opposing full back, and the droves that turn up to Old Trafford every week will be hoping, and indeed expecting, to see exactly that from Di Maria this season.
The Argentinian also cedes to few in his ability to drive the team forward with mazy runs from deep, allowing him to contribute to the team in build-up and offer more than just quality in the final third, something Depay is perhaps lacking currently.
Van Gaal will hope that the two slightly contrasting styles of Di Maria and Depay will compliment each other, with the Argentine being more of a creator and Depay a finisher.
What is certain, however, is their directness and speed will give United the ammunition of an explosive counter attack in their arsenal, a method of attack that has begun to diminish at Old Trafford in recent times.
Van Gaal has found two wingers that can provide the cutting edge Manchester United desperately need, capable of winning matches in an instant with a moment of individual inspiration, and will hope that Depay and Di Maria will transform United’s wingers from being the predictable players they’ve resembled of late to the creative geniuses they’ve been in years gone by.
