Should Man Utd cut their losses with injured Pogba and sell him in January?
Stefan Bienkowski
- Updated: 23 May 2023 08:54 CDT
- 4 min read
Manchester United’s season went from bad to worse this week when the club confirmed that Paul Pogba had picked up an injury that would rule him out for the remainder of the year.
Despite sitting out the club’s last two Premier League matches due to suspension, Pogba remains one of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s most important players and will be a huge loss for the struggling Old Trafford side.
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However, while no injury is ideal, this particular one does seem to neatly pull Pogba’s current situation at the club into full focus. By the time the France international is fit again to play for Man Utd he may have entered the final six months of his current deal and be on the cusp of agreeing a move to another club.
And while Solskjaer’s happy demeanour may never admit publicly that he and his backroom staff are considering such a notion, perhaps it is time for the club to draw a line under Pogba’s spell at Man Utd and sell the midfielder in January.
Inconsistent form
Pogba certainly seemed intent on proving his doubters wrong at the start of the season, when he bagged no less than seven assists in his first four Premier League games for the club.
However, those emphatic performances came against a troubled Leeds side and equally disheveled Southampton, Wolves and Newcastle. Since then the midfielder has struggled to impose himself on West Ham, Aston Villa or Leicester City and was dropped for league clashes against Everton and the Liverpool game on Sunday.
Add to that a lack of goals or assists in the Champions League and getting pulled off in the club's draw last Tuesday against Atalanta after 69 minutes, it certainly seems as though Pogba is back to his old, inconsistent self whilst now struggling to even hold down a starting role in Solskjaer’s team.
The amount of touches Pogba takes there is unexplainable and he's guilty of that too often. No #mufc player needs a performance more than him tonight and he's not cut it so far.
— Samuel Luckhurst (@samuelluckhurst) November 2, 2021
Breakdown in communication
The sub-plot to Pogba’s struggles for Man Utd this season is undoubtedly the fact that the midfielder still hasn’t signed a contract extension with the club.
After last January’s theatrics - in which Pogba’s agent declared that he will leave the club - the France international has huffed and puffed on and off the pitch without any clear indication of what his future plans are.
Now, with reports in Spain suggesting the player’s agent may push discussions back to April, it seems all but certain that Pogba will consider all other options before committing to Man Utd. And that should be more than enough proof to suggest that he’s not worth keeping around at all.
