Who wins: A team of Manchester United’s rejects or Manchester United?

It took, as an absolute maximum, just a little more than three weeks.

Antony left Manchester United on January 25. He was, at that stage, less of a footballer and more of a meme. The Brazilian had become an avatar for all that was wrong at Old Trafford: the lack of direction, the lack of purpose, the lack of a plan. United as a club seemed to be captured in that footage of Antony pulling off an endless succession of stepovers and getting nowhere in the process.

And then, by February 20, he was busy declaring that he had “found himself” again. He had scored three goals in his first four games for Real Betis. His manager, Manuel Pellegrini, was gushing with praise. “A player of a really high level,” he said. Quite why he had suffered so much and struggled so badly at United was, Pellegrini said, a mystery.

That story, that narrative arc, probably sounds familiar.

David de Gea’s final few months at United had been so draining, so demoralising, that he was not entirely sure he would ever want to play again; halfway through his first season at Fiorentina, his manager, Raffaele Palladino, has described him as a “monster”. 

Marcus Rashford spent a sizeable portion of this campaign being told, in no uncertain terms, that he was the problem at United. He was not in the right shape, the right frame of mind, to play for Ruben Amorim. He joined Aston Villa on loan in January. He started creating goals, largely for Marco Asensio, essentially instantly.

All of which poses two questions. The most serious one is: just what is it about the modern Manchester United that seems to sap the life from players? The funnier one, though, is: would a team of players recently sold, loaned out or otherwise discarded by Manchester United beat the current, actual Manchester United?

Of course, this is not a real-life case study. There is no science here. It is a thought experiment, nothing more: what happens when you take a team that has been cobbled together from a load of ill-matched raw materials, one that has little or no tactical coherence, one that is nothing more than a patchwork of names on a sheet, and make them play against the following list of people who have recently left Manchester United?

To begin with, and drawing up a first-choice Manchester United XI from players currently at the club is clearly no easy task judging by recent results, let’s go with this for the team the rejects will be taking on. It is selected on the possibly wild assumption that all players are fit:

And so to the opposition.

There is no point disguising this: this theoretical team will theoretically be undermined by a soft theoretical centre.

De Gea has been in superb form for Fiorentina this year and is an obvious choice in goal, but Manchester United have not, in recent years, sold a raft of commanding central defenders. The explanation for this is because Manchester United have not had a raft of commanding central defenders to sell.

The exception to that rule is Raphael Varane, one of the finest defenders of his generation and released by United last summer after three elegant, injury-strewn seasons in England. He started this campaign at Como, in Serie A, but managed just 23 minutes before suffering another knee problem. It was one too many and he retired soon afterwards.

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It would be easy — lazy, some might say — to include him anyway, but on the grounds that if you don’t have rules then society collapses, he has been excluded here. Varane has retired. We’re in the business of posing hypotheticals, not conjuring dream worlds. 

Instead, this team will have to make do with a pairing of Eric Bailly and Axel Tuanzebe in the middle. This is not ideal, not least because Tuanzebe is primarily a right-back. He has occasionally featured in the centre for Ipswich, though, and he would not be entirely lost there.

Bailly, meanwhile, is trying to rebuild his career after an unhappy spell at Besiktas. Progress, admittedly, has been slow — he rejoined Villarreal last year but has been beset by injuries — but we are going to assume, for this one-off game, that he is fit. Both would probably still be capable of coping with either Rasmus Hojlund or Joshua Zirkzee.

Bailly (left) playing for Villarreal against Real Betis in December (Jose Jordan/AFP via Getty Images)

Fortunately, the options at full-back are much more enticing.

In a season of only partially remitting bleakness for West Ham, Aaron Wan-Bissaka has been a rare ray of sunshine at right-back. On the opposite flank, Alvaro Carreras offers a slightly more adventurous outlet.

United sold the 21-year-old Spaniard for €6million (£5m) or so to Benfica last summer; he has spent the subsequent few months building a considerable reputation in the Portuguese capital, particularly for his offensive contributions. The initial deal reportedly included a buy-back clause, one which United chose not to activate in January because they wanted to sign Patrick Dorgu instead. This is not great business.

Much the same could be said of selling Scott McTominay to Napoli last summer. That United had little choice — thanks to the club finding itself perilously close to breaching the Premier League’s financial rules — does not make the pill any less bitter to swallow. McTominay has thrived under Antonio Conte in Italy, emerging as nothing short of a folk hero in Naples; the player they call ‘Braveheart’ has been credited as the central driving force of the club’s title challenge.

McTominay has excelled at Napoli (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

Alongside him, Andreas Pereira — a player United bought exclusively to loan out, apparently — adds a touch of panache, having established himself as a valuable member of a Fulham team that is objectively better than Manchester United. 

Angel Gomes was once the youngest player since Duncan Edwards to feature in United’s senior team, but he left the club in 2020 while still a teenager. Quite why the club could not agree a contract with him is not clear, but it’s likely that his limited opportunities after that first appearance did not help. It might have been worth sticking with him: he has blossomed into a wonderful, metronomic midfielder, a key part of a Lille team that might yet reach the Champions League quarter-finals and, as of last year, an England international. (Everton’s James Garner could provide a more defensively minded alternative.)

GO DEEPER

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That just leaves the attack, where we are deliberately going to limit our options.

Every so often, someone in the section of X, formerly known as Twitter, dedicated to United will bemoan the club’s decision to release Mason Greenwood when his contract expired last summer. The sole justification for this is that he has scored 15 goals for Marseille in Ligue 1 this season. That does not cut it, though. As easy and accurate as it is to lambast United for all manner of things, it would be wrong to scold them for making a moral decision. Cutting Greenwood loose was not, in any way, a mistake.

Antony has found some form in Spain (Aitor Alcalde/Getty Images)

That leaves four contenders for three places.

Jadon Sancho has flattered to deceive a little at Chelsea, so he will have to make do with a place on the bench — there’s a pattern here, Jadon, one that might be worth following — behind Antony, an almost instant favourite at Real Betis, and Anthony Elanga, who has been so good for Nottingham Forest this season that he might well represent the most baffling of all United’s decisions.

Rashford’s relationship with playing through the middle is volatile — yes, that’s probably the word — but it would appear, from his early form with Aston Villa, that all he needed was a drive down the M6, a supportive manager and a bit of a point to prove to rediscover some of his old zest.

Besides, none of these players can rest on their laurels (except maybe the central defenders) because of the strength of the bench. As well as Garner and Sancho, Donny van de Beek (now with Girona) offers a bit of control, Leeds’ Daniel James runs very fast in largely straight lines, while Teden Mengi provides some cover, at least, at the back. There are two goalkeepers in the queue behind De Gea: Matej Kovar of Bayer Leverkusen and Dean Henderson of Crystal Palace.

This team is not, of course, perfect. It is clearly not capable of winning the Premier League. It would not journey deep into the latter stages of the Champions League. But that is not the bar.

The bar is far lower: it is beating, in a one-off game, a team that currently sits 14th in the Premier League. That does not seem an unreasonable idea. This is a side full of players adjudged to be not good enough for Manchester United’s high standards.

But then much the same could be said for the team they would, hypothetically, be facing.

(Top photos: Getty Images)