Morgan Schneiderlin signed a 4 year contract for Manchester United in the summer of 2015 for a fee of 24 million euros which could potentially increase to 27 million with add-ons. Prior to that, he plied his trade in the English football for 7 years with Southampton. In his first season with the Red Devils, Schneiderlin has had a mixed season. He has just made 17 appearances this season and the fans have showed a cold reaction towards United manager Louis Van Gaal every time the French International is benched.
Schneiderlin has seemed to become a crowd favourite and the players were highly appreciating him after the game against bitter rivals Manchester City. However the question over here is should Schneiderlin be started in all the games for Manchester United? Well, my answer is yes and I give my answer based on a certain factors. Let us have a look at them.
The win factor:
Every team that has a player like Morgan Schneiderlin, gets an additional factor of a win. The deep lying central midfield role has always been one of the most underrated roles in any team. We have the likes of Sergio Busquets doing the same for Barcelona. Every time Barcelona played without Busquets this season, they have struggled even with MSN at the attack. We saw Darren fletcher do that for United for a decade. Schneiderlin too has that impact. He has a work rate of a fit horse and you would normally find him all over the field trying to perform his duties with perfection.
He is like a wall in front of the defence. He is excellent at breaking opponent’s attack and is a proper central defensive midfielder. United have won 57% of the games this season in which Schneiderlin has started and without him they just have a 28% win rate. He has had an average pass accuracy of 85% or more in his entire EPL career. That speaks of the importance the Frenchman has in the team.
A future leader:
If you analyse the performances of Schneiderlin closely, you will find that he is a leader on the ball and has the most number of passes in a game for his team. He is the link between the defence and the attack and most often than not an important play will go through him. Apart from that he is one of the most successful tackler in the English Premier League and had every now and then breaks important runs of the opponent. At Southampton, he used to marshal the defence with him and was one of the reasons why Southampton always rated him highly.
In his first season in the Premier league, he established himself as one of the best holding mid-fielders in England and won both Player’s Player and Fans’ Player of the year award at Southampton. He captained for the first time in his first season at a game away at Stamford Bridge and made the team make a comeback and finish 2-2 against the then European champions Chelsea. If given the proper amount of time, Schneiderlin can definitely become one of the future leaders of United.
A big match player:
In his last season at St. Mary’s, his performances especially against the top 4 teams were brilliant and he was the prime reason why Southampton were in top form for most part of the season. He was exceptional this season in the home game against Arsenal a few weeks ago and also in the away game against City.
He was one of the best players for Manchester United in Europe when they were playing in the qualifiers of the Champions League and even though it was his first time in the premium stage in Europe, he was hardly troubled by it. There was a reason why the Southampton fans became extremely sad when they heard that the Frenchman was leaving to Manchester United. They are used to their star players leaving with the likes of Lallana, Shaw and Clyne leaving in recent seasons but they weren’t as sad as they were with the departure news of Schneiderlin.
Premier League Experience:
Even at an age of 26, Morgan Schneiderlin has quite a bit of experience in the English top flight. He has been playing at the top level of English football for 3 and a half seasons now and has adapted well to the English Challenge. This gives a huge boost to Manchester United because they have a bitter sweet love affair with injuries and miss a lot of important players at important times due to injury. That doesn’t seem to be the problem with Morgan and apart from the knee injury he suffered against Tottenham last season, he didn’t have any major injury in his English career and has missed very few games due to injury even when he was with Southampton.
He is already been regarded as one of the best holding mid-fielders in England with more games under his belt, he is just going to become better. Manchester United have had troubles in the central midfield area post the retirement of Paul Scholes. Schneiderlin has a different style as to Scholes but if he is started in all the games, he is bound to become a great player for Manchester United in the Central area. Given his experience and performance in EPL till now, Manchester United might have found a player who can lead the midfield for quite a few number of years.