Paul Pogba has put his Manchester United legacy in a no-win situation
Paul Pogba is either going to leave Manchester United for free (again) or sign a new contract that he'll never be able to live up to
We should start by saying, most of this isn’t Paul Pogba’s fault. Yes, he could have handled a lot of the last five years better than he did, but he didn’t ask for a £90m price tag to be put on his head. He didn’t ask for the gargantuan expectations that were suddenly heaped on him. It’s not his fault that £90m started made people expect goals and assists galore even though Pogba was a midfielder playing as a deep midfielder in Jose Mourinho’s ultra defensive system, or that people judge him by assists when assists very much rely on your teammates actually finishing the chances you create for them.
Football is a team game. There are 11 players on the pitch so the impact of one player is only going to be so much. Having said that, some positions do have a bigger impact than others. Central midfield is one of them, but only to a degree.
A bad central midfielder could very well take you from a good team to a bad one. Not having the right central midfielder could prevent you from winning games you should be winning all on his own. In order to win, you need your CM to play well, but even the best central midfielders aren’t going to win you games all on their own.
I don’t care what Roy Keane says, if you expect a deep central midfielder to grab every game and win it for you then your expectations are completely far-fetched. Insinuating that Keane did that week in week out is just as ridiculous. Yes he had his Juventus moment but Keane was a great midfielder surrounded by great players. They made it really simple for him to do his job and win games, but when you took Keane out of that United team, they still won.
In Pogba’s five years at United the team has more shots and scores more goals when he’s on the pitch compared to when he’s not. They also just win more. Since the start of the 2016-17 season United have won 58.47 percent of the matches Pogba started, compared to just 45.21 percent when he doesn’t. They win 2.03 points per match with him and just 1.64 without him. Extrapolated over a 38 game season that’s 76.97 points with him, and 62.47 points without him.
In other words, with Pogba United have been a Champions League team, without him they’d be fighting for the Europa League.1 Despite all the overwhelming evidence, for some Pogba is still not living up to expectations because he’s not Bruno or something.2 For most of his time at Old Trafford, United failed to surround him with good players.
That brings us to Pogba’s current situation. Pogba’s now in the final year of his contract and he’s yet to sign an extension. In January he can start negotiating with clubs outside England to leave on a Bosman transfer next summer. There is a chance United he leaves United for free for the second time in his career.
United are hoping to sign him to an extension as they should be. Since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took over Pogba has been mostly great. He was fantastic in that first stretch under Solskjaer, was fantastic during Project Restart in 2019-20, and hit some of his best form at the end of last season.
In a simple world, it wouldn’t even be a question whether you extend Pogba or not, but it’s not a simple world when you have his agent Mino Railoa running constantly running his mouth and demanding outrageous fess and wages for his clients next contract.
That’s why when it comes to his Manchester United legacy Pogba is putting himself in a no-win situation. When United fans will look back on his United career, there’s almost no way it’s going to end well.
At the moment, no one is offering up the kind of wages Pogba/Raiola is asking for. Not for a 28 year old with an injury history. If he wants those kind of wages, he’s going to have to prove it on the pitch. If he proves it on the pitch, that’s going to be very good for Manchester United.3
But then, one of two things will happen. Either someone else will offer Pogba the wages he’s looking for and thus he’ll leave on a free, or United will tie him down to a new contract on high wages and he will likely never live up to that contract.
United currently have offered Pogba about £400k/week which would make him their highest earner. Pogba deserves to be among the two highest earners at the club based on both his on-pitch performances/value and because the club makes so much money off him commercially and he deserves a chunk of that.
Personally, I think at the end of the day United will be the ones offering him more than anyone else and he’ll sign a new contract, but living up to that contract will be next to impossible. Pogba will be 29 at the start of next season. He’ll have - maybe - one more year performing at this level, but for the most part, his best years will be behind him. He’s had injury issues in five of his last seven seasons, expecting those to go away is completely naive.
He’ll still have his vision and he’ll still have his passing so he’ll still be able to make a big impact, but pretty quickly his legs will go and he’ll no longer be able to play twice a week. At a certain point he’ll turn into late career Paul Scholes - which is fine - but late career Paul Scholes wasn’t the club’s highest earner. He’ll still have big moments and big games but there will be plenty of games where United won’t have him, and if they want to be competing they need an adequate replacement. How adequate can his replacement be when Pogba himself is eating up such a large chunk of the wage bill?
The most likely scenario is for the last two or three years of his contract Paul Pogab is a £400k/wk earner who isn’t playing like one. The only way that turns out OK is if the rest of United are so good that their winning league titles with Pogba coming up with a few big moments along the way.
I’ve always believed Pogba will go wherever the highest offer is. He’s happy at Old Trafford and isn’t desperate to leave and therefore he’s in no rush to sign an extension if the terms aren’t what he (read: Mino) want. Therefore it’s completely unfair to suggest that he has some sort of obligation to do that here.
United paying £89 million for Pogba doesn’t make him ‘obligated’ for United to recoup a fee for him. The bottom line is United can’t get a fee for him anymore and that’s not Pogba fault at all.
You can only sell a player if someone is buying, and right now, no one is lining up to pay a transfer fee to buy Paul Pogba. Real Madrid don’t have the money, PSG just spent it all on Messi. If Pogba came out and said he wasn’t going to sign an extension, why in the world would you pay £50 million for him this season when you can get him for “free” next summer?4
If he says he’s not going to sign, why would you spend any more than £20 million on him (and frankly that’s a number that’s way too high)? What would United do with £20 million? The ideal replacement for Pogba was Jack Grealish and not only is he off the market but he cost five times as much. You’re not getting enough money from Pogba to adequately replace him. If you’re serious about trying to compete you’d just hold on to him for the rest of the season and whatever happens happens.
And that’s how it’s going to play out. Either Pogba is going to leave for free or he’ll sign an extension that will be incredibly hard for him to live up to. When it comes to his Old Trafford legacy, it’s going to be very hard for him to come out on top.
If this isn’t evidence that you need more than “just Pogba” I don’t know what is
A ridiculous comparison considering that Bruno plays further up the pitch
The match against Leeds was exhibit A
If I was selling my couch that I spent £800 on for £200 and when asked why I said “because I’m moving in a month and it won’t fit in my new place, so I’m just trying to recoup some of the money I spent on it otherwise I’ll have to throw it out” would you hand me £200 for it or would you wait a month and take it when I’m throwing it out? I thought so.