Any Manure player has to understand that Van Gaal is interested in anyone other than himself. If a player doesn't make him look good then he will be binned and he will find someone else to do the job. If Shaw needs nursing then he really has chosen the wrong club. Just look at Di Maria who is a top experienced international player who appears to have dropped like a stone regardless of his £60m price tag....next!
I can feel some empathy, for Shaw, because of his age. I think most people, here, realise he was SFC's equivalent to Trigger, from Only Fools, so it was down to his advisors, including his parents, to do what was best for him, and not what was best for them.
Because Lallana was a great player for us and scored goals. I know that Tadìc is the straight replacement and was only purchased because Lallana left, but he hasn't been as consistent or as productive in that respect as lallana was last season. A few more goals and we might be looking at top 4 now.
One thing to remember is that Shaw is very young. He hasn't had the benefit of life experience that we have had, and it's easy to make a foolish decision at that age. As outsiders, most of whom are considerably older than Shaw, we could see that going to Man U wasn't in Shaw's best interests, but try telling that to a teenager with the world at his feet. And it's not necessarily just about the money. The kudos of playing for a team as famous as Man U isn't something that we can offer (yet) at Southampton. A parallel might be drawn with Clyne. I think many of us are resigned to losing Clyne this season, (preferably for top dollar), but Clyne has shown greater wisdom in his choice to come to us than Zaha did in going to Man U. Sure, Southampton might ultimately have been a stepping stone onto Arsenal / Chelsea, but there's little doubt that Clyne has furthered his development since playing for us. One thing the article does is speaks volumes about Southampton. We come out of it as a team which cares about its players. Naturally, if a player wants to move away, we can't stop them and should be compensated accordingly, but we don't come out of the article looking like mercenaries and snake-oil salesmen who pimp out our best players for financial gain.
We are in the football pecking order, and have to live with it. We can go and "steal" players from teams like Burnley/Palace/most foreign teams as we are an attractive proposition to whichever player we are targeting from these teams as we can offer them more money. It is exactly the same as when teams larger than ourselves come knocking for our players, they are almost certainly going to want to at the very least have the opportunity to speak with whichever club is interested in them. It takes something massively drastic to change this in the short term (like an Abramovich or a Sheikh) and long term I really do not know how possible it is for the hierarchy to have a huge shake up by just natural growth of a team, as generally the ones who spend the most finish higher in the long run.
I have at lot of sympathy for Shaw. He's obviously been badly advised, because at that age you back your abilities; after a tremendous season and an England call up, he'd have been thinking that getting into United's team was easily achievable, especially with the void they were looking to fill after Evra's departure. However, he's obviously not been told that the level of individualism and independence is different to that with us. Although, if Van Gaal has said he's not fit enough, he's only got himself to blame. Then again, with performances like yesterday, there may be signs of change.With Lallana, he's not as good as either Coutinho or Sterling, so with the system they play it's no surprise he can't get into their team, and when he's had a chance he's not grasped it.
He's too immature to have moved when he did...surprised others didn't realise it as he needed mentoring from Nicola and Mauricio. How much would he have learnt from working with Koeman. However, I'm happy with how it turned out for us.
