For some reason, this week has been ‘the Jadon Sancho week’ and really, it needn’t be at all.
Yes, he made a comment to Marcus Rashford about being free from Manchester United, so what? I think any of us would want to be the heck away from that club right now, it’s an absolute mess and clearly a hideous place to be.
Then there was reports that Chelsea were paying £150k-a-week for Sancho this season despite him only being on loan, which of course is absolute nonsense.
Sancho will be a permanent Chelsea player in the summer, and they will be paying just over £20m to sign him. Whatever happens down the line, I don’t think that’s a bad deal, even if he just becomes a rotation player. Will he be content with that? Probably not, but then we can just move him on and get a return on what we’ve paid. His wages are also not going to be ridiculously high, Chelsea don’t pay out high wages anymore. At least Sancho had/has some Premier League and European experience, I’m not going to be moaning about that in the grand scheme of things.
And then comes the criticism. I agree, Sancho has not been as good lately. But he did arrive at the club and perform well for a good handful of games. You also have to remember that the rest of the team have been awful as well since Christmas, at least most of them.
Sancho has a lot of quality for me, whether he will ever be that regular starting winger who makes a different game by game at a consistent rate remains to be seen, but he has a lot to like about his game and he can be a real threat.
In 13 Premier League starts this season, he has 6 goal involvements, that’s pretty much him creating or scoring a goal every other game. It’s certainly not a terrible return for a winger.
Sancho is completing 1.9 dribbles per game in the league, and making 1.2 key passes – this is decent. He is also taking 0.9 shots per game, which could improve.
Some fans issues are that we don’t have goal-scoring wingers, and this is a good point. But I don’t think we should be too hasty with Sancho just yet, I do have some belief in him and rate him as a player. I just hope that he can sustain what he showed at the start of the season when everyone was raving about him (I have the receipts).
Don’t get me wrong, he has certainly been disappointing in recent games and needs to step up again. But I do believe he can still offer us a lot and for what we are paying to sign him, it’s not a bad deal.
