One thing that’s true of just about every football player that makes a big move and fails to live up to their transfer fee is that there will always be another club who believes they can be fixed – but it will take a club with more faith than most to take on Brazilian winger Antony, whose two years at Manchester United have been particularly putrid. And apparently, that team of optimists can be found at St. James’ Park.
Caught Offside are among a few online outlets reporting that Newcastle United are seriously considering a bid for the £86m flop despite a return of just five Premier League goals across two turgid seasons. Their need for a new long-term right-winger is pretty plain, but is Antony really an upgrade from Miguel Almirón, say? And even if a recently closed police investigation in his home country doesn’t give the Magpies pause for thought, shouldn’t his form?
For the past couple of years, Antony has looked entirely at sea in the Premier League, a player with an endless supply of step-overs but nowhere to go with them. If the ability to perform an elastico equalled end product, he would be considered world class. As it is, it’s been like watching an influence from tekkers TikTok trying to do it for real, and failing.
The debate over whether a top-flight player can be chiselled out of Antony’s career hinges on two questions – firstly, what has caused his Mancunian malaise, and whether a fresh start or the right coaching and team around him can fix it, and secondly, whether he is able to turn things around far enough to reach the level required of a player who cost quite so much money.
The former is the harder of the two to answer without daily access to the dressing room at Old Trafford. Antony is not the first player whose career trajectory has nose-dived there in recent times, and given the personal and professional struggles apparently endured by and Jadon Sancho one has to wonder if some combination of the man management, support structure and internal atmosphere at the club is causing all these issues. Certainly it seems like there has been too much smoke for the fire to be nothing more than bad luck.
But if the psychology of the situation is a major contributing factor, and even if he could regain his best level with an injection of confidence, the second question would then come into play. To answer it, it’s not enough to look at his performances and stats for
, which are almost universally abysmal, but to look at what he achieved at , when he was supposedly at his peak and when he played well enough to persuade United to make him one of the most expensive players in Premier League history.