A 19-year-old French winger, A Manchester United player scoring against Liverpool on his debut. What an excellent way to conquer the hearts of the fans! Anthony Martial created a lot of hype in the initial days but the form dropped somewhere in between. Some fallouts with Mourinho and Inconsistent performances later, he looks like he is back to his best. Can he sustain the form he is right now?
A great beginning
Louis van Gaal bought the not well known French man to Old Trafford for a fee of £36 million, potentially rising to £58 million. How come such a big amount for a less known teenager? Is he worth the money? All such questions answered with just one goal. How can we forget the beautiful goal against Liverpool? (Rolled back the years to the days of Thiery Henry).
What went wrong for Martial?
The first season was not a bad one for Anthony Marital as he finished with 11 goals and 4 assists from 31 games. The form started to dip and inconsistency began to surface. Especially if you are under Mourinho, you just can’t underperform.
In the 2016-17 season, he scored 4 and assisted 6 whereas in the next season he scored 9 and assisted 5. This is not the figures that Mourinho expect from his attacker. These figures have inconsistency written all over them and Mou doesn’t like that.
Apart from being inconsistent, Martial had a fallout with Mourinho. He was fined as he left the Manchester United squad in the pre-season. Mourinho was adamant to sell the Frenchman but Ed Woodward had other plans.
Time for improving
At this point, it seems that Woodward’s decision to keep him at the club seems to pay off. A string of good performances has made sure that Martial is slowly getting into the good books of Jose Mourinho. He was excellent in the game against Newcastle where United made a great Fergie style comeback. Against Chelsea too, Martial was impressive. Against Everton he was phenomenal and he has an excellent goal to show for.
This season from 7 games Martial has scored 4 goals. He slowly getting back to the beast he is. Now it is up to Jose to be patient with him and turn him into a world-class player. A truly world class player needs to be consistent and if Martial can keep up his form both Manchester United and France have a lethal forward in their ranks.
