Luke Shaw has endured a career of ups and downs, starting out as a highly-touted prospect at Southampton, earning himself a move to Manchester United as the most expensive teenager ever at just 18 years of age for a fee in the region of £30M. Nominated for the Golden Boy award too, having already been named in the PFA Team of the Year for the 2013/14 season, Shaw was possibly one of the most exciting talents in English football in a decade.
This heaped pressure onto Shaw to deliver, and when he started the 2015/16 season as one of Man United's best performers, he suffered a double leg break; out for over a year, Shaw returned when new manager Jose Mourinho had taken the reigns at Old Trafford. To say the least, the pairing endured a rocky relationship, with numerous public spats which saw Shaw ostracized from the side. With his United career seemingly done, timing favoured Shaw when Mourinho was sacked in the 2018/19 season.
New manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would give him a chance to be his starting left back, and the 2020/21 campaign saw arguably Shaw's best season for the club to date. Despite a club-low in the 2021/22 season - and certainly a dip from Shaw - the 2022/23 season saw a resurgent Shaw under Erik ten Hag, and he seems to be a pivotal part of the project: this article aims to focus on why he is so key for Erik Ten Hag moving forward.
Why is he so useful to Erik ten Hag?
Shaw is a technically excellent footballer - this is no overstatement.
He has proven his capability to both underlap and overlap with ease, forming a formidable partnership down the left side with Marcus Rashford. One of Shaw's best attributes is his combination play in tight space, having the understanding of how to find pockets of space or create such space. Shaw will occupy the half space or wide channel according to which is more necessary in an action.
Being left-footed on the left side is common for left-backs due to passing angles, and Shaw is no different, with the exception that he is one of the best around when it comes to utilising this advantage to its fullest extent. This can be seen in his progressive numbers, where Shaw averages 5.74 passes into the final third per 90 and 45.31 carries per 90, as per FBRef, which has him in the 95th and 86th percentiles respectively.
Furthermore, a supplementary yet very attractive characteristic of Shaw's game is his capability to play - if needed - as a left-sided centre-back - either as a base position or in the build-up. Part of this capability to do so is due to the previously stated progressive numbers, with Shaw effective against the first line of a press due to his evasiveness and his ability to break lines with his passing quality.
Ten Hag has often used a 3-1-6 rest defence and a 2-3-2-3 deep build-up structure, in which Shaw usually either takes a role as one of the '3' or '6' in the 3-1-6 due to his positional versatility, and a position in the first '3' on the left side in the deep build-up setup.
With Ten Hag's adherence to principles of relationism (focus on the relationships between players, space, and the ball) and some indeed of positionalism (the division of the pitch into zones, in which each individual player takes responsibility for a particular zone or zones), Shaw's ability to transcend both philosophies in the sense that he could easily adapt to a strict implementation of either makes him an incredibly viable asset, as when Ten Hag needs to tweak United tactically, Shaw is a player who is multifaceted.
Is he still underrated?
