We need to talk about Adrien Rabiot and Manchester United's transfer strategy

I for one am baffled.

Aug 08, 2022

Is Adrien Rabiot a midfielder United needs or wants - Where would he fit

Originally I was going to write about the centre-back situation at Manchester United specifically surrounding Raphael Varane but after the team’s 2-1 loss to Brighton I can’t talk about our current team without getting irrationally angry, so I’m going to put that on the back burner for now…

…and instead, I’m going to talk about Adrien Rabiot, a much more reasonable subject for United fans.

According to David Ornstein, it seems likely that United will move for Rabiot this summer. Some have dubbed it a panic buy, but according to the English journalist the club has been working on this transfer for a few weeks, meaning they meant to sign the 27-year-old French midfielder.

Which is worse you tell me, but it seems that come the end of the transfer window there is a possibility that Rabiot will be wearing a United shirt and plying his trade at Old Trafford.

But is it a good move for United?

Well, the short answer is no, but anyone could tell you that (unless you follow the trophy logic train of thought and think his 24 trophies at two of the most dominant clubs in Europe have any bearing on what will happen at United).

You didn’t come here for the short answer however, you came here for me to systematically break down why I think it’s a bad idea that United have moved for Rabiot.

So here it goes.

I’ll start by saying, I don’t like Rabiot and I’m pretty annoyed United are looking to sign him. Every time I’ve watched him over the past few years he’s underwhelmed me and what he offers has been a mystery1, so yeah this is going to be a bit biased but then again you read this to get my opinion.

Firstly, let’s talk about the fee. On paper £15-20m does not sound like an awful deal in this market, but it’s worse than you think.

Rabiot only has one year left on his contract at Juventus and the club has been actively trying to find a destination for him over the past year to avoid losing him for free at the end of next season.

United have not only offered them a way out, but will relieve them of his 175k a week wage packet as well while providing a much higher fee than he deserves. And if you want to frame it the way that certain fans have, given Paul Pogba has gone the other way to play in Juventus’ midfield it could be considered one of the world’s worst swap deals.

But then we move on to the player himself and that is a lot to unpack. Both Rabiot and his mother/agent Veronique have been at the centre of many disputes during his career.

From trying to force a transfer while at PSG and getting himself dropped to the youth sides, asking Didier Deschamps to leave him off the reserve list for the 2018 World Cup after becoming offended that he had not been selected, and even his mother having a bust-up with the parents of Pogba and Kylian Mbappe during the 2020 Euros; controversies are never far away while Rabiot is at your club.2

And whether United should be adding this unstable element who has been described as ‘petulant’ into their dressing room in Ten Hag’s first season after the problems of the 2021/22 campaign is a question that needs to be asked.

If he’s an exceptional talent and upgrades the midfield it’s worth the risk, right? Well, he’s not ‘exceptional’, not even close.

Rabiot has his strengths, mainly his ability to carry the ball from deep and he is okay if slightly inconsistent defensively, but it seems that the fans who want the club to sign the French midfielder only want him because he’s not McTominay or Fred, rather than he is the sort of player that United should be looking to sign.

But what if I told you that Rabiot has some similar weaknesses to United’s number 39?

Like McTominay, he is not a great progressive passer meaning that he can slow down how the team moves the ball from back to front, and his decision-making, once he carries the ball up the pitch, can be hit or miss.

While he is much better at positioning himself to receive the ball, which is one of the major question marks over McTominay, his ability to receive it is sometimes lacking and at times he can ‘ghost’ through games due to a perceived lack of effort instead.

And if we want to really dig into the statistics, even though he’s a ‘shuttler’, he ranks lower than McTominay for progressive passes, carries and completes fewer dribbles per 90 minutes played if you have a quick peruse of FBref (yes this is for a struggling Juventus team but he is moving to a struggling United team).

Furthermore, he only averages around 30 passes a game with a completion rate of 82%, so it’s reassuring (if you can be reassured) that later reports by Ornstein seemed to suggest that he was in addition to Frenkie de Jong rather than an alternative.

However, my main issue with Rabiot is it exposes United’s lack of imagination and ingenuity.

The club have been linked with the player on and off again between 2014 and 2019, but never seemingly made move for him, so making one now when he is 27 and with none of the bags of promised potential he had in previous instances screams of desperation.

Since United tore their recruitment structure apart right before the transfer window, a lot of responsibility has been placed on the shoulders of John Murtough and Erik ten Hag this summer and they are struggling.

But the club’s transfer strategy has been problematic for years, so it is unfair to land the blame solely at their feet for this summer’s debacle.

Moises Caicedo’s dominant performance against United for Brighton in their 4-0 win last season and again in the 2-1 win on Sunday is a clear enough example of where United got it wrong in the past (seeing how he was linked with a move to Old Trafford prior to his transfer) and the duo have done some good things this window.

Their original three transfers of Tyrell Malacia, Lisandro Martinez and Christian Eriksen seem to be inspired (even with their prior links with the Netherlands or Ten Hag), but the rumoured moves for Marko Arnautovic3 and Rabiot seem like two whiffs if they come to fruition.

A midfielder was high on the priority list and to that end De Jong has been targeted, but given how neglected United’s pivot has been in the last few years (their last signing there was Fred under Jose Mourinho), there was a strong argument that they shouldn’t stop at one.

Bruno Guimaraes (in January), Boubacar Kamara, Cheick Doucoure, Vitinha and now potentially Fabian Ruiz and Leandro Paredes are all players who could have fulfilled this need and now all seem to be missed opportunities, and if Rabiot is to be in addition to De Jong instead of an alternative it begs the question why were none of these players seriously targeted.

Rabiot’s transfer will hopefully raise the floor of the squad (which is still useful for a midfielder), but there were options that also raised United’s ceiling and if the club want to get back to the top under Ten Hag they need to aim for the latter.

But while United are still misfiring in the transfer market, City and Liverpool are acquiring hit after hit using their great recruitment structure, with Darwin Nunez and Erling Haaland likely to follow the trend which makes the gap harder to close.

I guess though as United fans we may have to be subjected to things getting worse before they hopefully get better under Ten Hag or whichever manager takes his place if he becomes a victim of the club’s mismanagement.

(And if you’re bored of reading about Ten Hag and all that, I swear next week’s newsletter is not going to be about United)

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