Alexis Sanchez has failed to live up to expectations since his January move from Arsenal to Manchester United. That’s obviously not news, but his complete no show in the FA Cup Final loss to Chelsea yesterday was certainly news-worthy, as it inspired United club legend Paul Scholes to scathingly critique his former club once again.
Scholes has been a very harsh critic of the team during the Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal eras, and he did not hold back in hammering the Chilean over his failure to make an impact at Wembley Stadium Saturday evening.
“His performances, well, they have to improve. They can’t get any worse to be honest with you,” Scholes said to BT Sport.
“I think the next few games of next season are vital to him, he needs to get fans believing again and believing they are going to get close to City. They need a big player.”
Alexis, like Paul Pogba, are both paid handsomely, in the same class as an elite of the elite kind of footballer. However, neither of come remotely close to consistently performing at that level during their time at Old Trafford so far.
Scholes continued: “Paul Pogba does not win you games on his own. [Eden] Hazard does. Alexis Sanchez doesn’t, he’s shown that since January, they thought he could, but what we’ve seen…
Coming to a cinema near u soon! #FACupFinal pic.twitter.com/SHA49Uxvvg
— PAUL McG AFC ???? (@Afcpmg) May 19, 2018
“They need two magical players. I think they’ve got really good players, they haven’t got a Hazard, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [Lionel] Messi, and I know many teams haven’t, but the difference between the two was the quality in Hazard, we saw that in big games. United don’t have that.”
Hazard was the hero of an extremely dull and tedious FA Cup Final, in which he provided the only scoring. His heroics kept United from acquiring a trophy this season, and thus left United supporters wondering what went wrong and what must be done to fix it. They improved from sixth to second in the table, and reached the knockout round of Champions League for the first time since 2014.
However, they still finished almost points off the top of the table, and got thoroughly embarrassed in the UCL round of 16. The gap between United and Manchester City, as well as the European elite, is crystal clear. Perhaps Scholes is right- United need a true galactico or two in order to reach the level that we’re used to seeing the club reside at.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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