Revealed: The latest on Jadon Sancho's Man Utd exile

James Shearman

• 19 Oct 2023 09:53 CDT
• 2 min read

Manchester United officially opened their new £7million training base for the club’s women’s and academy teams at Carrington on Tuesday, but for Jadon Sancho some things remain the same.

Sancho has been training on his own at the academy facilities since the beginning of October, after he was exiled by Erik ten Hag for publicly branding the United manager a liar over his reasons for dropping him for the 3-1 away defeat by Arsenal.

It is a measure of Sancho’s dramatic fall from grace at United that a player who cost £73m in the summer of 2021 after a protracted transfer pursuit is now reduced to such a sad, peripheral figure.

The 23-year-old winger continues to work alone at Carrington where he is forbidden to mix or eat with his team-mates.

Sancho even has to lock the door when he changes in the academy due to safeguarding issues relating to any senior player mixing with minors.

Jadon Sancho has been training on his own at Manchester United since his disagreement with Erik ten Hag

It is understood that the player can come in from the cold if he says sorry to Ten Hag — but only if the apology is sincere.

So far Sancho has refused to give his manager the apology he wants, and is showing no signs of backing down despite the appeals from senior figures at the club and his own team-mates.

He has spent the last six-and-a-half weeks training on his own, and there is a growing feeling that even if he were to say sorry at this stage it would be an empty gesture and may still not be acceptable to Ten Hag.

If the matter remains unresolved, United will listen to offers for the England international in January, two-and-a-half years on from his big-money move from Borussia Dortmund.

He has struggled to live up to expectations ever since.

The club were prepared to accept £45m for Sancho in the summer and may now be persuaded to agree to a loan move away from Old Trafford in January, particularly if it came with the guarantee of a permanent transfer.

United are prepared to take a significant loss on Sancho, if it means supporting Ten Hag who was brought in to improve discipline which had lapsed under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick.