Who is Man Utd’s Worst Player of the Season so far?

Martin Macdonald

• 29 Dec 2021 14:40 GMT
• 4 min read

Manchester United have had an extremely underwhelming campaign so far in 2021/22.

Despite a positive transfer window in which Cristiano Ronaldo, Jadon Sancho and Raphael Varane were brought in, the team as a whole have been poor which led to the dismissal of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer from his role as manager.

Before the turn of the year they are already out of the title race in the Premier League and face a battle just to finish in the top four and qualify for the Champions League.

In this campaign they have suffered one of the most embarrassing defeats in their history, too, losing 5-0 at home to arch rivals Liverpool.

MANCHESTER UNITED'S MOST VALUABLE PLAYERS

In Europe, they have largely had to rely on the individual brilliance of the likes of Ronaldo and David de Gea to progress in the Champions League group stage.

Here are their three worst performers of the season so far.

3. Jadon Sancho

Sancho may have found a little bit of form recently, but the fact is the club would have been expecting more of a return from their £73 million investment in the England international in the summer.

Yes, Solskjaer is partly to blame as he constantly pulled Sancho in and out of the team, but the player himself needs to take some responsibility also.

Sancho went 14 matches without scoring a goal or recording an assist before he scored in two matches in a row against Villarreal and Chelsea.

Despite being the assist king at Borussia Dortmund, he is yet to set up a team-mate in any competition this campaign.

He, of course, still has major quality though and Man Utd will be hoping the settling in period is coming to an end.

2. Aaron Wan-Bissaka

It seems now that the Aaron Wan-Bissaka experiment has failed.

Following a decent season for Crystal Palace in which he shone in one-on-one situations, Solskjaer felt the need to ask Man Utd for £50m to spend on the right-back.

Wan-Bissaka wasn't bad in his first two seasons at Man Utd, not so much going forward but defensively as he again proved himself tough to beat by opposition attackers.

Unfortunately for him, he has let his defensive qualities slip in 2021/22 and when he doesn't have that, he has nothing.

An injury has seen him lose his place in the starting XI to Diogo Dalot, and it might be permanent.

With Man Utd on course to record a potentially vital three points away at Chelsea, he gave away a daft penalty to gift the Blues a way back into the game, and it summed up his season so far.

1. Harry Maguire

Man Utd captain Harry Maguire has had a completely torrid time so far this campaign, and if he wasn't captain you would struggle to think of a reason why he was so consistently selected.

Things really started to go downhill for Maguire when he was rushed back too quickly from injury to feature in a match against Leicester which Man Utd lost 4-2.

It is not an exaggeration to say that he was at fault for all four goals, with his mistake for the first the most baffling as he waited and waited to receive a pass from De Gea only for Kelechi Iheanacho to rob the ball and set up Youri Tielemans.

He was then to blame for a conceded goal against Atalanta a few days later, and was hopeless against Liverpool, too, arguably at fault for two of the goals conceded.

By November, he was already at fault for NINE opposition goals due to errors, according to InStat.