This week Manchester United announced the signing of versatile attacking midfielder Ashley Young from Aston Villa in an estimated 17 million pounds deal. With the addition of Young to the last season’s winning squad, rival Premier League clubs will find it even harder to stop United’s attacking threat next season.
This week Manchester United announced the signing of versatile attacking midfielder Ashley Young from Aston Villa in an estimated 17 million pounds deal.
With the addition of Young to the last season’s winning squad, rival Premier League clubs will find it even harder to stop United’s attacking threat next season.
Young arrives at United after having successful spells at Aston Villa ever since he joined the club in 2004-2005 season from Watford.
Young’s arrival means United rivals Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City will be aware of young’s attacking threat, hunger to score goals and win games.
Young should have been more useful for the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool than United. At United, Nani, Park and Antonio Valencia have done enough to convince United faithful as top players.
Yet Nani and Valencia provides real quality on the wings, their arch-rivals Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal lacks such a threat in their teams.
The attacking threat from wings was very instrumental for United romp to their record breaking 19th English title last season and the signing Young will only add depth and strength to the already good United squad.
These days players of Young’s caliber are hard to find. He can score goals and creates more for his teammates.
Arsenal has Theo Walcott but he is nowhere close to Ashley Young more especially when it comes to skill and shooting ability. Young should absolutely have been a good candidate for Arsenal if the gunners had made early plans to capture the lethal winger.
Arsenal lack creativity in attacking options and Young should have been one of the right solutions to Arsenal’s goal scoring problems.
At Liverpool, there is still lack of strength in depth when it comes to wide play and Liverpool has conceded on several occasions due to lack of good wide playing midfielders.
Striker Andy Carroll is so good with feeder midfielders especially from wings. He is so good in the air needs to play with a good crosser of the ball from the wings.
Likewise Chelsea needs sharp and quick wingers to link up with Drogba upfront. This is why Roman Abromovich should have cashed on Young’s signature.
However the intriguing question mark now remains how Young will dislodge Nani and Valencia from their starting places.
There’s certainly a much higher chance that United will win silverware next season than Liverpool.
This might have engineered a move to Old Trafford with this motivation in mind and this might demonstrate a degree of short-sightedness on Young’s part. Manchester United already has a wealth of wingers. Nani has been arguably the Player of the Season this year, despite what plaudits have unjustifiably lavished upon injury plagued Gareth Bale this season.
Down the other flank is Valencia whose pace and determination has won him a great number of fans this season.
With Ryan ‘evergreen’ Giggs and the tireless Park Ji-Sung in tow, there’s a good argument to be made that United simply was is no need of another winger. May be they wanted to hide him from the hands of the title opponents or Young himself wanted to put on a United shirt?