Jadon Sancho’s Dortmund return: For Man Utd, no gain without pain from loan deal

The best-case scenario for Manchester United seems highly unlikely. So what can the Red Devils really hope for from sending Jadon Sancho back to Borussia Dortmund for the rest of the season?

Jadon Sancho is ‘home’, safely back in the bosom of Borussia Dortmund and no longer getting under the feet of the Manchester United academy coaches tasked with going through the motions with the £72million winger for the last four months.

It seems a good, convenient deal for all involved. Sancho gets to kickstart his career with ‘a smile on his face’; Dortmund get back a player who tore up the Bundesliga and made them a sodding fortune upon his move to Old Trafford in 2021; and United have shifted most of the liability for the winger’s huge wages on to someone else.

Beyond saving a few quid, though, it is hard to see decipher how this best plays out for United.

Best-case scenario: Sancho rediscovers his form, fitness and motivation in Dortmund before returning to Old Trafford in the summer ready to redeem himself and make a success of a career few envisaged going this far off track.

However Sancho performs in the yellow and black, if any of that is to happen under Erik ten Hag, an apology – or at the very least, a compromise – will have to be forthcoming. Assuming Ten Hag is still around to welcome Sancho back to Manchester in July.

If indeed United feature in Sancho’s vision of his future, the 23-year-old seems to be banking on Ten Hag following him through the Old Trafford exit door on a rather more permanent basis. Maybe some distance, a few hundred miles more than the width of the car park between the first-team and academy buildings at Carrington, will prompt a thawing in relations between the pair but, right now, it is hard to imagine either backing down from the row that sparked Sancho’s return to Germany.

So Sancho succeeding at United is likely to hinge on Ten Hag failing to solve his side’s woeful inconsistency through the second half of the season and the appointment of a new manager. Another one.

Maybe United have already taken the view that Sancho will never fulfil his potential at the club. It would be hard to argue with the logic should they have reached that sorry conclusion. Only fleetingly has the £72million star offered any encouragement that he can be the game-changing winger they thought they were signing. At Dortmund, he was involved in a goal every 88 minutes. For United, it was one for every 277 often-anonymous minutes.

On the right, he struggles to go past defenders and needs a full-back flying past him from behind to open up spaces to exploit. On the left, he is woefully predictable, while playing through the middle in what appeared to be a last-gasp throw of the dice on Ten Hag’s behalf to find a winning formula, Sancho was swallowed up.

All or most of that being true, perhaps the best they can hope for is that Sancho settles much quicker back in Germany than he managed in Manchester and ‘prepares and scores goals’ to the extent that Dortmund or anyone else decides to take a punt on the flighty forward.

Ready to Go 🫡 pic.twitter.com/t8PVG7CkcL

— Borussia Dortmund (@BlackYellow) January 11, 2024

Inevitably, that will reflect terribly on United. Most things do these days, but any Sancho success away from Old Trafford would be held up and used as a stick with which to beat the club and the manager, however accustomed both might have become in absorbing the blows.

At least a sizeable transfer fee might offer some consolation but no-one will give United the money they will hope for. The Red Devils are almost never not the patsy in the transfer market and the best they could probably hope for is half of their money back. Even that, right now, feels a stretch since every suitor will view Sancho in a buyers’ market.

Manchester United winger Jadon Sancho

United have been terrible sellers, to the point now where the club ought to accept the need to cut their losses in many cases for the sake of moving forward. Sancho would certainly fall into that category without a shift in the current circumstances.

Then there is the other possibility, far less palatable for all concerned: Sancho’s mojo isn’t in Dortmund either. And the winger, after four months sat between the sidelines and his PlayStation, is unable to rediscover the form and consistency last seen at least two and a half years ago. Back he will go to United, who would face having neither a use nor a market for a £250,000-a-week liability.

For United, there isn’t likely to be a pain-free conclusion to this sorry Sancho saga. Something will have to give whether it is their manager, their financial expectations or their already-battered reputation.

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