Ryan Giggs weighs in on Jadon Sancho and Erik ten Hag situation

Jadon Sancho has endured two difficult years since he joined the club from Borussia Dortmund in 2021 after one of the longest transfer sagas in United’s modern history.

Sancho joined the club immediately after being culpable in England’s Euro 2020 final loss to Italy and that proved to be an issue in the first couple of months and the tricky winger never really got going after that.

Erik ten Hag’s arrival 12 months later seemed to have been a boost for Sancho but that quickly subsided and before you knew it, he was out of the team for over two months and was training individually.

Since then, he has continued to be in and out of the team and recently, he took to social media to deny claims by Ten Hag that he had not reached the level expected of him in training.

Ten Hag comments, made in the aftermath of United’s disappointing last-minute loss to Arsenal last week, have been dissected by experts worldwide but now, United great Ryan Giggs has weighed in on the situation.

“It seems like it was the last throw of the dice, ‘Let’s call him out publicly and see how he reacts'” Giggs told the Webby & O’Neill channel, via the Manchester Evening News.

“From the outside you don’t know, but it looks like Ten Hag has tried everything with Sancho, really. When he first came to the club, I was a fan, I thought he could get better, improve, which he’s not really done in the short space of time he has been at the club.

“For me, he always made the right choices in that final third which is rare for a young winger, but it hasn’t happened. He [Ten Hag] has sent him away to get fit, he’s tried him in different positions, and for me, calling him out publicly is probably the last straw, or the last try, to get the best out of Sancho.

“The player can react and think, ‘Right, I’ll show him, and show the manager what I’m capable of’, or he can sulk and probably won’t get anywhere. It’s up to Sancho now. I know a lot has been made of his training, and for me training at United – from my experience as a player – was harder than the games.

“If it’s true his training performances haven’t been good enough, you’re not going to play. It’s also a responsibility of the dressing room to make sure he’s performing in training.”

It remains to be seen how all of this unfolds after the international break and with Antony’s immediate future at the club also up in the air, Ten Hag has some big decisions on his hands.

You would hope that clear-the-air talks have been held since the two locked heads in separate statements and that everything is sorted by the time United welcome Brighton to Old Trafford next week.