Damning twitter thread shows how Van de Beek was ignored by Man Utd teammates vs Villa

Donny van de Beek just can’t make things click at Manchester United.

Signed to great excitement back in 2020, Van de Beek might have endeared himself to the Old Trafford faithful across his 57 appearances for the club, but he’s certainly not been able to replicate the form that we became used to seeing from him at Ajax.

Regularly stapled to the bench under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and shipped out on loan when Ralf Rangnick came to town, Van de Beek hasn’t even been able to make the breakthrough everyone was hoping for under his old Ajax coach in Erik ten Hag.

How is Van de Beek going at Man Utd?

It did, after all, make a lot of sense in theory that the arrival of Ten Hag to Manchester would be exactly what the doctor ordered to get Van de Beek back playing exactly as he did at the Johan Cruyff Arena.

But alas, Van de Beek’s woes in the famous red jersey have only continued in spite of Ten Hag’s appointment, starting just three matches so far this season.

The 25-year-old has been given a few more chances in the first-team over the past few days with starts against Real Sociedad and Aston Villa twice, but he did very little to suggest that a long-awaited renaissance was on the cards.

How did Van de Beek perform vs Aston Villa?

In the latter clash with Villa in the Carabao Cup on Thursday night, Van de Beek’s statistics made for miserable reading as Sofascore clocked him in at just 21 touches and only 12 accurate passes across 62 minutes of action.

It inevitably meant that Ten Hag faced serious questions about Van de Beek after what ended up as a 4-2 victory, and he certainly had a blunt way of going about his answer.

“I don’t think the loan makes sense,” Ten Hag remarked, according to the Manchester Evening News. “It’s either he fights and proves himself in this environment or he goes, but for me, there is still a way for him.

“But it’s not going to be easy for him because the competition there is really strong.”

Are Man Utd players ignoring Van de Beek?

However, is there reason to believe that Van de Beek’s United teammates need to accept some responsibility for the Dutchman’s struggles? Well, a damning Twitter thread by @UtdArena would certainly suggest so.

There’s been a theory for some time now that Van de Beek has been ignored an inordinate amount as a passing option by his teammates throughout his time at the ‘Theatre of Dreams’, so much so that a video highlighting the phenomenon went viral earlier this year.

And when you take a look at the fascinating analysis – which already boasts hundreds of retweets and thousands of ‘likes’ – into Van de Beek’s movement against Villa, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it’s done anything other than continue.

So, as the mystery of Van de Beek’s struggles at United continue to leave us all scratching our heads, be sure to get a handle on the alarming theme of him being ignored by his comrades down below:

Kudos to the thoroughness of @UtdArena because this certainly isn’t a cheap and shallow analysis trying to fit loose examples around a pre-determined narrative.

No, rather, the proof really is in the pudding that United players – whether consciously or not – are not taking the option of passing to Van de Beek with alarming regularity.

What has Ten Hag said about Van de Beek?

And even Ten Hag himself seems to be plugged into this occurrence because he also unpacked as part of his comments on Van de Beek the fact that he thought the player was still continuing to find the right spaces as a number 10.

“When I watch back the performance in Sociedad and also Villa, he is there in the positions I expect a 10 has to do,” Ten Hag added. “And nowadays, it is difficult for a 10 to really show themselves.

“We have the romantic idea of the No.10 as a playmaker giving the final passes, that they have to play in the middle of the park. But it is difficult there because nowadays all the good teams close the middle of the park, so it is really difficult to get a lot of ball touches.

“So that is also not the player who Donny van de Beek is but what he is doing well is his positioning and his movement together with the strikers, especially with the No.9, that combination, he is really good in positioning and anticipation in and out of possession, he did that to my satisfaction in the last games.

“But I have seen he is not on the scoring list, he is not on the assist list and he can do better. He is still not there on his limits, I have seen him better in the past, definitely. But I think positioning wise he is acting quite well. But he has to make that step with pace and intensity.”

A fair assessment, it must be said, because although Van de Beek evidently does need to up his own game personally, it’s clear that not all the blame should be laid directly at his feet.

One can’t help wondering what might happen in a world where Van de Beek was, to put things simply, given the ball more often. Surely to goodness that’s not too difficult of a task.