Jonny Evans

Thing is when Fergie did play Evans over Rio and zvidic fans moaned. When he sold Pique over Evans fans moaned he sold the wrong one.These days fans depend on him. How standards have changed at United.

comment by RB&W - He kicked lumps out of them (U21434)
posted 4 minutes ago
Thing is when Fergie did play Evans over Rio and zvidic fans moaned. When he sold Pique over Evans fans moaned he sold the wrong one.These days fans depend on him. How standards have changed at United.
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Yes this was the comment at the time how the hell did we let Pique go and keep Evans who at the time was physically weak and error prone, he couldn’t play against physical strikers I remember Carlton Cole destroying him at West Ham.
Pulís toughened Evans up at WBA and Leicester were good for him, his confidence is higher now plus he is living the dream at the end of his career, he really does love the club and is giving it everything he has got while players with far more ability haven’t / don’t give a feck it’s just a job.

It probably helps that Evans is playing with the knowledge that he's coming towards the end of his career, and probably not under the same pressure as other players. That alongside his experience etc

We had to let him go when we did. Decent back-up, but was never going to break the Rio-Vidic partnership, and he won things with us, so could go and get regular football and no doubt improve his game. I doubt that improvement would have come if he had stayed.
He's a solid pro, who is looking assured in an average performing squad - I don't feel he is doing anything outstanding, but it shows where we are that he is one of our better performers

We had to let him go when we did. Decent back-up, but was never going to break the Rio-Vidic partnership
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This is a weird myth that's developed among United fans (you're not the first even on this thread to say it)...but Evans didn't need to break the Rio/Vidic partnership, since both of them had already left by the time we sold Evans.

The season Evans left, we signed Marcos Rojo and gave Tyler Blackett and Paddy McNair a fair bit of game time at CB.

The reason we let Evans go was because we appointed LvG at a time where he seemed to be losing his marbles a bit.

I do remember we didn't really see him as first choice material and LVG obviously felt the same, rightly or wrongly. But I'm not sure many back then were screaming out at the decision to let him go. But these thing happen, and it probably benefitted him personally to leave the club.

comment by Red Russian (U4715)
posted 3 hours, 42 minutes ago
comment by Vengeance (U23079)
posted 12 hours, 3 minutes ago
comment by Vengeance
posted 0 seconds ago
comment by -bloodred-
posted 2 minutes ago
Rio and Vidic had both gone when we sold Evans (for peanuts, might I add). We then went on to spend, I would imagine about £250m on CBs before bringing Evans back. And out of those, only Varane had ever been a better defender than Evans.

Regardless of hindsight, it was a horrific bit of business to let him go for what we did. Genuinely one of our worst of the past decade.
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The biggest mistake we made, other than selling him, was not including a buy-back clause and triggering it sooner. It was an era of wastefulness and sporting cluelessness by Woodward, highlighted by letting one of our own go cheaply when keeping him and building a defence around him would have made more sense.


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His time away from United undoubtedly shaped the player we see today. The reduced spotlight and the pressure of competing with two of the greatest CBs in our history likely took a toll on him mentally, contributing to the individual errors he was prone to making. That aspect of his game diminished outside of United, so perhaps he needed that time away, but I still believe we should have brought him back much sooner.

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It's pretty common for centre backs to mature as players later than other positions. The stakes revolving around micro-judgements (positioning, interpretation of space, anticipation) are higher than they are for e.g. forwards, so it's natural that experience is particularly important. I don't think Evans was especially error-prone for a young CB. He was just a young CB, and that's what they do.
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👍

comment by -bloodred- (U1222)
posted 1 hour, 29 minutes ago
We had to let him go when we did. Decent back-up, but was never going to break the Rio-Vidic partnership
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This is a weird myth that's developed among United fans (you're not the first even on this thread to say it)...but Evans didn't need to break the Rio/Vidic partnership, since both of them had already left by the time we sold Evans.

The season Evans left, we signed Marcos Rojo and gave Tyler Blackett and Paddy McNair a fair bit of game time at CB.

The reason we let Evans go was because we appointed LvG at a time where he seemed to be losing his marbles a bit.

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Evans wasn't good enough even when Rio and vidic left. nobody moaned when he was sold. He ended up at west brom. If he was good enough for us, he wouldn't have been at west brom.
Yes I know had Rojo, etc, but that is besides the point.

nobody moaned when he was sold
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I did

Look I’m not sure Evans was ever good enough to play week in week out for a title challenging team.

I suppose my point is that he is clearly better than some of the players we bought or kept on to instead of him.

As bloodred mentioned the likes of McNair and Blackett were favoured over him and both essentially weren’t PL players.

The like of Rojo and Blind were brought in to replace and neither were better than him imo.

The likes of Bailly, Lindelof and Maguire were signed instead of bringing him back and you could argue only Maguire at his best was as good or better than Evans but in terms of value for money again it’s not close.

I once created an article on Jonny Evans during his 1st spell here.