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Manchester United have played the majority of the season without a specialist left-back due to the multiple injuries suffered by Luke Shaw and Tyrell Malacia.
The England international has missed 23 games and there are fears he might miss the remainder of the season. The Netherlands international has been sidelined since pre-season.
The situation got so bad that the club was forced to dip into the loan market and bring in Sergio Reguilon on loan on summer deadline day.
The Spaniard showed heart but was not as defensively astute as manager Erik ten Hag would have liked and United opted to terminate his loan in January and the full-back has since moved to Brentford.
LB crisis at United
The other big call that the club took was to send academy graduate Alvaro Fernandez, who the Dutch boss did look at in pre-season, out on loan to Granada in the first half of the campaign and to Benfica in January.
That has proved to be a disastrous call with the manager forced to play Sofyan Amrabat and Victor Lindelof in that position and both have struggled to say the least.
The switch to Portugal has not worked out for the young Spaniard either with newspaper Correio da Manhã (via Sport Witness) coming down hard on the 20-year-old.
It has been claimed that the Spain U21 international has not provided any “security” when playing as a left-back for Benfica since his move.
He has made 10 appearances in all competitions and the report has claimed that the defender is taking “too long to convince” his coaches at his new club.
Alvaro’s difficult loan spell
The player will point to the fact that he has started only twice and as a young player coming into a new league in the middle of a season, it is not that easy.
But it seems the defending Liga Portugal champions, who have the option to make Fernandez’s loan deal permanent at the end of the season for €6 million, are not too convinced about exercising that right at the moment.
Ten Hag had also deemed the former Real Madrid academy product not ready for the step-up and if Benfica do not buy him outright, Fernandez’s career might be stuck in limbo for a while.
Both Shaw and Malacia are expected to be fit for next season and the club also have plans of strengthening at left back. It will be interesting to see what happens with the player this June.
Soccer2day 