Summary Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag reportedly wants Harry Maguire to stay at the club and fight for his place, despite his recent struggles and criticism. The club's summer transfer business has been relatively successful, with new signings expected to improve the squad's quality and provide more options. Maguire's performance has declined in recent years, leading to doubts about his future at the club and calls for him to move on for a fresh start.
Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag "wants" £190,000-a-week "walking disaster" to stay at the club and to "fight for his place", according to journalist Alex Crook.
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The Red Devils have had a relatively successful summer of transfer business so far this year, with three excellent players coming in that should help improve the quality of the squad, if not the first eleven.
Signing Mason Mount for £55m, whilst expensive, should help to improve the side's midfield and give ten Hag some much-needed flexibility when picking his line-up ahead of games.
Likewise, the arrival of Andre Onana was always going to give the team more options when playing out of a press, but his transfer was made all the more pertinent following the departure of long-term keeper David de Gea.
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Rasmus Hojlund is a little more of an unknown quantity, but if he can replicate what he did in Serie A last season, the team should look better in attack.
The one area that United have struggled with in terms of transfers is selling players, with former captain Harry Maguire personifying that struggle more than perhaps anyone else.
The England international looked to be edging ever closer to joining West Ham United over recent weeks, only for the deal to be called off, with Alex Crook explaining that ten Hag actually wanted to keep the defender at the club this summer.
He explained the situation live on TalkSport, with the clip being posted to their YouTube channel:
"I think finances probably do come into it, but the indication that I'm getting from sources at Manchester United are that Erik ten Hag wants Harry Maguire to stay, he wants him to fight for his place, he's said as much publicly before that game on Monday night against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
"And I think that's quite key to it all because we did a story on the transfer notebook on the TalkSport website a month or so ago, saying that Ten Hag privately told Maguire that he still had a future at United I think Maguire wanted to hear that in public he's heard that now so at the moment it looks like he'll stay."
How old is Harry Maguire?
Born March 5th 1993, in Sheffield, England, the 30-year-old has certainly been through a lot at the Theatre of Dreams, from coming in as the world's most expensive defender in the summer of 2019 to being made captain in January 2020 and then having that captaincy removed only last month.
And whilst the England international had a strong start to life in Manchester, winning the Man-of-the-Match award on his debut and playing every minute of the team's 38 league games in the 2019/20 season, the last few years have been somewhat of a disaster for the former Leicester City star.
In the 2021/22 campaign, Maguire started just 28 games, and then last year, under the stewardship of Ten Hag, the £190,000-a-week man started just eight Premier League games and made an additional eight appearances off the bench.
However, with the likes of Lisandro Martinez and Raphael Varane ahead of him and his below-par performances over the last couple of years, it's not hard to see why.
According to WhoScored, after averaging a match rating of 7.12 in his first season with the club and 7.04 in his second, the former Hull City defender dropped all the way down to an average rating of just 6.65 in his third year with the club and 6.59 last campaign, which for an £80m centre-back just isn't good enough.
Described as a "walking disaster" by Manchester Evening news journalist Samuel Luckhurst, it might be best for all parties involved to work out a way for Maguire to leave the club and kickstart his career once again, as even after ten Hag's comments, the chance of him becoming a starter again seem near zero.
