Morgan and Victor Took Protecting the Ball to the Next Level
Manchester United have stopped messing about and decided to
get on with it and sign Morgan Schneiderlin from Saints for a fee of somewhere
in the region of £24 to £30 million quid.
It was the worst kept secret in football for a while but it’s finally
happened as we all knew it would. It was
an open secret since last summer that he’d be gone this summer, the only
unknown was the destination and let’s face it, whilst it’s disappointing, it’s
not a bad destination.
We were completely skint and had just survived relegation to
League 1 by the skin of our teeth when we signed Morgan. He was an unknown kid from Strasbourg and we
were paying £1.2 million for him when we didn’t have any money, on the
recommendation of Georges Prost, the Frenchman who was overseeing the Academy
at the time. There’s were these rumours
going round that Arsenal had had a lot to do with his transfer and that we were
merely keeping him for a bit. If memory
serves, we even signed another French kid (Romain Gasmi) to keep him company in
keeping with our babysitter approach that we had. We bought Marian Pahars a fellow Latvian in Imants
Beleidelis and we had Kleber Chala as an Ecuadorian friend for the legendary
Agustin Delgado. All of the babysitters
were complete failures in their own rights as players.
Add all this up and add in the fact that the rest of the
team at the time was terrible and Morgan got burdened with unrealistic
expectations in that everyone expected this 18 year old kid to tear up the
Championship and fire us to promotion.
It didn’t happen and we got relegated with Morgan playing well in a few
games but in the main, flattering to deceive.
He had something but no one was really sure what it was, least of all
Jan Poortvliet, his first manager who didn’t have a clue about anything.
A new season brought League 1 football, the Markus Liebherr
takeover and a new manager in Alan Pardew who liked what he saw in Morgan but
told him that he needed to toughen up. He still didn’t really stand out as anything
special and the more prosaic talents of Dean Hammond and Paul Wotton were often
more effective in midfield as games passed Morgan by. Teams tended to defend deep against us and
park the bus, only attacking by lumping the ball forwards to the obligatory big
bloke. When the ball was in midfield it
was usually one big scrap which the 19 year old Morgan wasn’t always up
for. The success of that season was
winning the JPT and Morgan was injured for the final.
The first markedly better season was in the League 1
promotion season under Nigel Adkins and his partnership with Hammond dominated
most matches. With Chamberlain and
Lallana on the wings and Lambert and Guly up front, he flourished as we
dominated a vast majority of matches.
When Chamberlain disappeared off to Arsenal at the end of the season, it
was assumed that Morgan would be off too but still the big boys hadn’t seen
enough in him to warrant it.
The Championship was of course a higher standard than League
1 and some could raise their game and some could not. Morgan was one of those who could and was an
influential performer when partnered with any one of Hammond or the newly
acquired Jack Cork or Richard Chaplow.
He became a more consistent player as the team started the season well
and just kept on going through to another promotion. He had had more influence in games the
tougher they got and now the question was, could Morgan do it in the Premier
League? By this time, there were no
Saints fans who had any doubt.
The first season in the Premier League under Adkins, saw
Hammond fall by the wayside and Morgan’s emergence as a genuine Premier League
class midfielder was aided with the return from injury of Jack Cork in the
Novemeber of that year. Cork’s return
enabled Morgan to flourish, add a few goals to his game keep that going to an
eventual Saints Player of the Year award and a call up to the French national
team. He had been ignored up to this
point by Didier Deschamps who had made noises to the effect of Morgan playing
for the wrong club. There was even talk
of him being qualified to play for England as he’d been here 5 years by that
point but that only ever seemed like a ruse to try and get Deschamps to see the
wood for the trees.
The full season under Pochettino saw Morgan having to adapt
to the high pressing strategy which he achieved with ease. The skinny French kid who had got lost in the
scrap in League 1 was now mixing it with the best in the Premier League and
winning, in partnership with Victor Wanyama.
He chipped in with some important goals and always seemed to save his
best performances for the big guns. He
was by now turning into the complete midfielder with the defensive discipline,
the ability to go box-to-box and the range of passing. By the end of 2013-14, Pochettino had
defected to Spurs and Morgan was his top target. The club refused to sanction any move away
for him in the face of a rash of sales.
Morgan famously threw his toys out of the pram and wrote his ‘6 years of
an amazing journey, DESTROYED in 1 hour’ tweet.
In the event there was one bid, a ridiculous £10 million offer from
Pochettino and Spurs which just offended anyone including apparently, the
player himself.
Deep down, we all knew that season 2014-15 under Ronald
Koeman was going to be his last at the club but he got over the upset of the
summer and just got on with it and what a season he had. Superb performance after superb performance
as Saints defied all expectations and occupied the Champions League places for
much of the season. The highlight of the
season for many was the performance at Old Trafford where he and Wanyama
completely dominated the midfield to ensure United didn’t get a shot on target
as won 1-0. The really big clubs
couldn’t fail to take notice now and once Manchester United’s name came into the
mix, it was only a matter of time before he departed. There was the briefest moment when United
signed Bastian Schweinsteiger first that we thought that Morgan might be their
second choice but a day later the deal was done and the kid we paid £1 million
for, kept for 7 years on our upward journey and developed into a world class midfielder
had been sold for considerably more than that to the biggest club in the
country.
There should be no animosity towards him as he’s been
brilliant for us overall. He’s made a
genuine massive step up in joining United and his signing is a very significant
step to getting them back where they should be.
United are of course, a huge club and they have a virtual guarantee of
Champions League football every year.
I’ll never care much for United but they’re now just a striker and a
centre back away from being a title challenging side again. The additions of Morgan and Schweinsteiger
will take a lot of pressure off of their dodgy defence and the two of them will
make all the ridiculous hype that surrounds the snail-paced, non-tackling,
can’t-play-when-pressed Carrick look ridiculous.
I find it amazing that other clubs weren’t in for Morgan as
with the possible exception of Chelsea, he would improve any side in England
and many of the big guns abroad. Here
anyway, Arsenal have missed out, as have Manchester City. Are Coquelin and Fernandinho better than
Morgan Schneiderlin? No way. I’ll
forgive the offending tweet though it was annoying at the time and also, he
seemed to be unable to keep his mouth shut when interviewed in France on every
international break but the bottom line is, if no one had paid the money this
summer, he’d have been back playing for us next season and he’d have just got
on with it, just like he did last year. He must be counting his blessings that Spurs
weren’t serious about signing him and that Saints would have blocked it anyway.
In terms of his career, he is going at the right time – he’s
25 with 7 years behind him. He’s learnt
all that Saints can teach him and got the experience required to take into his
United career. I feel that Shaw,
Chambers and before that, Walcott, Chamberlain and even Bale left too soon and
could have done with another few years at Saints. Also, Morgan has not left in a bad way
(Lallana, Lovren) and he should have our respect for that. The club issued a website tribute to him when
he went and that tells you he conducted himself well when compared against
Lallana’s two line send off. Adam did
nothing wrong though and he categorically never refused to play for the
club. Of course not.
So we should thank Morgan for all he’s done for us and wish
him all the best with his new club. They
are the biggest club in the country and genuine member of the elite in European
terms and if they come knocking for one of your players then all you can do is
wish them the best, especially if the player concerned has already given you 7
years. Maybe it will act as a lesson for
some of the youngsters to show that you can stay at Saints for a number of
years and keep improving until you’re absolutely ready for a big move. I remember thinking this about Theo Walcott
who could have given us 8 years and still only have been 24. As far as Saints are concerned, Morgan was a
huge player for us and massively instrumental in the journey we’ve been on for
the past 6 years. It’s a shame to see
him go but we’ll get someone else in for a fraction of the money (in fact, we
have already....) and we’ll march on.
Thanks Morgan
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