Chelsea legend Joe Cole would back himself to “get the best out of” Manchester United winger Jadon Sancho as he just “needs a little bit of nurturing”.
Sancho came off the bench in the Red Devils’ first three matches of the Premier League season before being dropped from the squad complately for their 3-1 loss to Arsenal in early September.
Erik ten Hag revealed after the match that the Man Utd winger was dropped because of his poor performances in training – but Sancho took to social media to claim he had become a “scapegoat” at the club.
The 23-year-old eventually deleted the tweet but is still refusing to apologise to Ten Hag with the Man Utd boss making Sancho train away from the first-team squad and banning him from all their facilities.
It now looks likely that Sancho will move on in the January transfer window with rumours of interest from former club Borussia Dortmund.
And Chelsea legend Cole “would love to speak to him” as he thinks the Man Utd outcast just needs some “nurturing and help”.
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“Jadon Sancho needs nurturing. Jadon is a fantastic footballer particularly with the talent and quality he’s got, but he needs a little bit of nurturing and he might need a bit more maturity,” Cole told TNT Sport.
“He’s clearly a young player with a heck of a lot of talent. In this current guise I can’t see how it can be [resolved]… Well, I can, but that would require movement from both parties.
“It’s not going to work for him at Manchester United and I don’t know what his next move is, but there’s still a player in him.
“I would love to speak to him and his people and try to help. If I was a young coach I would take Jadon Sancho and fancy I could get the best out of him.
“Give me Sancho as a manager every day of the week, rather than a ham-and-egg player – that’s an old phrase – but a player of that quality needs a little bit of nurturing and help.”
And Fabrizio Romano insists that it’s almost certain that Sancho leaves Man Utd in the winter transfer window but he has described the situation as “complicated”.
Romano wrote in his Caught Offside column: “Jadon Sancho I would say is looking 99% likely to leave United this January.
“Still, it will depend on many factors, despite links with Borussia Dortmund, because I think clubs will wait before deciding what to do during the January window – Dortmund, for example, will have to see where they are in the Champions League, or if they drop to the Europa League, or even out of Europe altogether.
“This is the case for a lot of clubs, so that’s why there are no talks now, but for Sancho the situation at Manchester United is complicated, for sure.
“The only way this could change is if Sancho decides to apologise in a very special way to Erik ten Hag and his coaching staff, but it’s almost two months now and nothing has changed, so the feeling of those close to the player is that he will leave Old Trafford in January.”
