Rhythm is a dancer, is Amad the answer?
Should Manchester United bring Amad into the fold next season?
When Manchester United were struggling for options on the wing in the 2021/22 season under Ralf Rangnick due to Marcus Rashford’s lacklustre form, the Austrian manager turned to the academy.
Anthony Elanga was the player he picked, a 19-year-old winger who had impressed in the academy with an impressive work rate, mercurial pace and a surprising amount of technical ability given his young age (I still stand by his vision when it came to 1-2s was outstanding).
With not much to celebrate in what was a torrid interim period under the ‘Godfather of Gegenpressing’, United fans found a spark of enjoyment amongst the apathy from Elanga’s performances and for this small relief, they awarded him a song:
“Rhythm is a dancer, Anthony Elanga,
You won’t stop him if you dare,
Came from Scandinavia,
To be United’s saviour,
Scoring goals from everywhere.”
At the time, you couldn’t go 90 minutes without hearing this tune from the terraces of Old Trafford, but fast forward to today and the hit song has been put on ice.
Though Elanga was getting regular minutes under Rangnick, he was being horrendously misused. The Swedish winger was played on the right which affected his shooting and passing angles and though the United faithful had warmed to him initially, his lack of output eventually made them sour towards him.
There is also an argument that it was too much too soon and luckily it seems like United are handling the minutes and development of Alejandro Garnacho much better as he has broken through to the first team.
Rashford has luckily found his form again, scoring over 30 goals this season under Erik ten Hag but United fans are still not happy with their options on the wing.
Despite spending £157m on Jadon Sancho and Antony, neither have set the world on fire at Old Trafford and United fans are getting impatient. So with the fans looking for new options on the right wing, another young player has caught the eye.
Amad, who United signed from Atalanta in 2021, has been impressing while on loan from Sunderland this season in the Championship and some fans believe that the Ivorian winger should be given a chance not only in the first-team squad but even the starting XI next season.
So that’s the question we’re hoping to answer in this week’s Played on Paper… Instead of a new transfer, is Amad the answer?
Before we fully get into what Amad could bring to this United team, I think I need to make two things clear. Both will eventually play into my conclusion of whether Amad is ready to make an impact at United.
The first misconception I have seen lately is about the quality of the Championship.
Amad has been making the league look easy, so of course, question marks have been raised about the quality of England’s second tier. Some have labelled it as an exceptional proving ground while others have labelled it, well for want of a better word, dogsh*t.
The answer, as it does 90% of the time, lies somewhere in the middle. The Championship is an interesting microcosm of the football pyramid, some teams play football you would expect to see in the Premier League while others play tactics that wouldn’t look out of place in League Two; Amad has landed at a club that falls into the former category.
This also applies to the players. Some have great technical quality, take Alex Scott for example at Bristol City, while others rely on let’s say more traditional skill sets.
The majority of both camps have the quality to play in the Championship, but it’s all about scaling; would they be able to make the step up to a better league? Amad falls into the group of players where you think, certainly yes, but that’s because he started at a higher level.
The structure of this system comes down to money (as it always manages to). With the new TV deal that was announced last week, I expect the level of the Championship to increase over the next decade as clubs will have more money to invest in recruitment and development, but as it currently stands it’s a mixed bag.
Also if you end up in the Premier League, even just a season’s worth of their TV money can set you on a path to being a top Championship side if it is invested correctly.
However, there is also the reverse of this; many Championship clubs are overcommitting finances to reach the ‘promised land’ and falling foul because of it.
Sunderland falls into an unfortunate third category, squandering most of their money from when they were a stable Premier League side and even being relegated to League One with massive money problems, but they luckily have returned to financial solvency another way.
Sunderland are bankrolled by the billionaire brother of Elaine from Seinfeld (aka Kyril Louis-Dreyfus) whose mission statement has been to sign young technically capable footballers who can make the team play an exciting brand of football.
That’s why they targeted Amad and that is why United decided to let him go to Sunderland, the 20-year-old fits the profile of what the Blackcats are looking for to a tee.
This leads to the second misconception I want to talk about - United fans’ perception of Amad’s profile.
One of the major complaints that United fans have had about Antony and Sancho this season is their reliance on support from other players to shine. Sancho especially can not create separation by himself so needs other players to help him, while Antony is better at it but still prefers to have an ally out wide who underlaps/overlaps to create space.
So when they’ve watched Amad move fluidly for Sunderland they have believed he is the answer to the problem; a player who can create from the right without the need for others.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Amad is pretty much the same sort of player as his peers at United, he is just playing in a team that is of a lower quality, so they rely on him much more, but in terms of roles and profiles is much better put together than United.
When he was first signed by United, Kees van Hemmen wrote an excellent piece for Scouted Football which broke down the young Ivorian’s skillset. He spoke about the Ivorian’s exceptional dribbling ability (which is the same for both of his peers) but also heavily about how he combined with others:
“The Red-Devil-in-waiting is not only strong in combination play, but he enjoys a reasonably positive relationship with his fullback. He generally has his eyes open for an overlap, and offers for the ball well in the halfspace.”
The one thing that Amad may have on Sancho is that he and Antony both possess a good burst of initial acceleration from a standing position, which allows them to go past opponents who look to go tight to them.
This has proved useful for Amad in the Championship because he is already given more space than he would be in the Premier League and therefore he can exploit it bountifully.
Something that Kees did state that Amad needed to improve on was his goalscoring and movement in the box, and he has done that this season, scoring 13 goals for Sunderland (he is their top scorer) and at times playing as a second striker behind Ross Stewart.
So long story short, it is a good thing that Amad looks a cut above the rest of the Championship because it is a good league, but it still doesn’t mean he is ready to be thrown into the deep end at United for certain. He also looks that way because he is a system player in a good and stable system.
So with those misconceptions cleared up let’s take a look at his fit for his parent club.
While the potential top-four finish may tell you differently, Manchester United are currently an absolute mess.
They don’t have a recognised striker and are relying purely on the magic of Rashford to carry them through, they have no way of progressing the ball reliably through their midfield or beating an opposition press, and while their defence is reliable out of possession, its is dysfunctional in it; Lisandro Martinez and Luke Shaw are both great, but the rest of defensive unit leaves a lot to be desired.
Package this all up with the fact that Ten Hag has had to abandon a lot of the things that made his Ajax team great, partly because of the change of environment but partially because of the personnel, to play a much less competent brand of football and you’re starting to realise why maybe some good players aren’t showing their quality in this side1.
Personally, despite his lack of a right foot (which he’s working on), I think Antony has had a good season all things considered.
United look much better when he is on the field because he understands the principles of the football that Ten Hag wants to play in the long term and he has shown flashes that he can influence the game individually as well with some great goals.
I think his creative output will increase once United signs a recognised number nine for him to work with and if Ten Hag tweaks the system to offer him more support on the right then he will also take another leap forward.
So with the understanding that Antony should still be the starting option and Amad would be coming in to offer depth, do I think the winger should spend next season at Old Trafford? Well, no.
I believe that it would be best for Amad to spend another season on loan next season and I would send him to another possession-centric Championship side or abroad.
Now you may ask ‘Casey why not try him in the Premier League so we can test his quality?.” The simple answer is that the clubs that would come in for Amad would not be playing the brand of football that United want to instil in the young forward nor the brand that suits him, so he would struggle regardless.
Burnley were playing a possession-heavy style in the Championship but unless they increase their quality of player drastically, I don’t think they will be able to play it again in the Premier League without getting run over (see Norwich).
He is not like Garnacho who can change the game off the bench with individual quality, Amad is a system player who would just be interchangeable with Antony; the only benefit his sub would bring is consistency across the 90 minutes.
For me, however, sub appearances aren’t enough and he needs to get regular minutes to continue his development and he is best doing this in an environment that will be much more stable than United. Maybe this is in the Championship, or maybe this is elsewhere in Europe (Feyenoord were interested at one point).
But maybe I am also wrong.
It’s clear Amad is an exceptional talent and after a disastrous loan spell at Rangers, he is finally getting to show his ability at a club that trusts him. So in terms of his individual quality, I think he would be an asset to United.
And who knows, maybe Ten Hag will solve all the problems his team has in the summer window and also get over this crippling fear of rotation, but this is Manchester United, so I severely doubt it.
I believe what’s best for Amad is to take the sword he has already forged and continue to hone it so when he returns to Old Trafford he is ready to challenge for the starting spot, rather than waste a season on the bench.
So is Amad the answer? No is my simple answer (yes I’m channelling Pitbull and doing my version of rhyming Kodak with Kodak).
The painful thing is while the examples are specific to Ten Hag, the general point holds for United in general post-Ferguson and it’s completely their fault.