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The Clever Boy Will Shine

One of the brightest talents that not just Manchester United fans but football fans in general are really excited about watching this coming season of course a certain Tom Cleverley.

After seeing and reading about Tom’s progress on loan, I really can see him shining for United this year and believe that he can take full advantage of the opportunities that he will get at Old Trafford and become a wonderful player.

Everybody claims that United urgently need a classy midfielder to replace Paul Scholes, who of course was a magician. People are saying that we need a conductor in our midfield that can play in that role for a number of years. According to a large majority of fans, the one man who is capable of replacing Scholes to some extent is Wesley Sneijder.

The Dutchman of course is an outstanding player who has been not only at the heart of Inter Milan’s success over the last two seasons but Holland’s as well on the International stage. Despite being a brilliant player, is he perhaps too expensive a replacement for Scholsey?

Sir Alex has never hesitated to spend large amounts when needed down the years, but Isn‘t it better to take a look within Old Trafford to find a talent, someone from our youth system who can be our next home-grown ‘Scholes’ perhaps?

In Cleverley, United have a very talented and promising young midfielder who certainly from what we have seen has the potential to become a key player in our team, if given the time and opportunities to develop further.

Of course over the last 2 and a half seasons, Tom has gained first-team experience out on loan in the Football League at Leicester City and Watford before doing just as well at Wigan last season in the Premier League.

Last season in Roberto Martinez’s side, who struggled for the majority of the season, Tom made 25 appearances, scoring 3 goals with 2 assists. Now those stats at first may not sound alot but for a team of Wigan’s size they were important contributions and certainly Tom’s performances were an added bonus for Martinez come the end of the season.

Whilst it’s hard to compare Tom to Scholsey in terms of what our legendary midfielder achieved in his career, it’s useful to look at how they performed in the League last season – even if as we know Scholes was clearly not the player that we saw in his prime who would influence all of United’s games.

Anyway. Tom as I said played in 25 games last season, Paul played in 22. Tom produced 28 shots last season with an accuracy of 52%, Paul had 13 shots last season with a 38% accuracy. In terms of assits, as I’ve said before Tom had 2 assists, Paul had 4. In terms of opportunities created Tom created 26, Paul 20.

In passing Tom is far behind with 636 passes against Paul’s 1,357 but you can put that stat down to Tom perhaps not seeing as much of the ball for Wigan as Paul did last season for United. Both players have a high success percentage in pass rate with Tom’s 82% not being too far of Scholes’ 90% which is an astonishing stat really!

The one area where Tom does appear to be better than Scholes is in terms of his discipline as in 47 tackles last season he won 74% of those challenges collecting only 1 yellow card. Scholsey only made 28 tackles last season winning 68% of them picking up 9 bookings.

Make of those stats, what you will but clearly Tom did well last season and certainly is not just a ‘pretty player’ which some crticis have labelled him and clearly he can develop his defensive side of the game – which all top midfielders need to do.

During United’s pre-season tour of America, Tom it would be fair to say did not start off that well in his first appearance in the States against the Chicago Fire. I just think that this was because of the enormously hot conditions the game was played in and that it was his first match after the European U21 Championships, so he was still getting into his pre-season.

As we know, Tom gradually got into his groove and increased his performance level throughout the Tour. Of course he played brilliantly in United’s 2-1 victory over Barcelona in Washington and Sir Alex spoke highly afterwards declaring that Tom had been ‘Our Best Player.’

Aside from that Tom made a good impression in Scholsey’s testimonial against the New York Cosmos and several days after that looked sharp in a charity match in Monaco against an Olympique Marseille side. In that game he looked confident on the ball at all times and scored United’s second on the night shortly after playing in Danny Welbeck for United’s first.

Then came the icing on the cake – the match against Manchester City for Comminity Shield. Tom appeared as a substitute at halftime with City in a 2-0 lead and arguably along with Nani stole the show for us. His movement with and without he ball was excellent to watch and he was eager to get on the ball and make an impression.

Just like good midfielders do, he was constantly searching for the ball and made some excellent and very precise interventions tracking back to win the ball particularly against City’s powerful midfielder Yaya Toure. The connection between defense and attack is so important for central midfielder and although he may not be very strong physically you can tell Tom compensates for that with his desire, drive and diligence.

Sir Matt Busby speaking about younger players famously said: “If you don’t put them in, you can’t know what you’ve got.”

It is a tradition at our great club that when a legend leaves, another one comes along and more often than not a younger star comes in and takes his place. Well, the time for The Clever Boy to shine has come and all United fans should be watching his progress closely. 

By Pepa Zapryanova @pepinka_ bg

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