Cristiano Ronaldo has endured a mixed experience at Manchester United since he completed a sensational return to the club – one year ago to the day on Wednesday this week.
The 37-year-old scored 24 goals in all competitions and the fans voted him as the player of the year but the following summer has been spent trying to engineer a move away from the club.
Ralf Rangnick’s ill-advised six-month spell at the club certainly didn’t help. United reacted well to the German’s methods initially but that quickly subsided and United ended the season with their worst-ever point tally in the Premier League.
Now, it has been revealed that Ronaldo, Paul Pogba and Raphael Varane were among the players to meet with Rangnick in a meeting in February to voice some concerns.
That’s according to The Athletic, who say that amid United’s poor form, the players met with the stand-in coach at the Carrington training ground.
Read more: Rio Ferdinand thinks Harry Maguire will fret over place in England squad
Among the concerns for Ronaldo was Harry Maguire’s place in the team. It’s claimed that Ronaldo had told Rangnick that Maguire should have been dropped. Additionally, The Athletic add that Ronaldo stood firm in his stance and even said that Maguire was part of the problem.
Rangnick is said to have been uneasy with Maguire’s absence from the meeting and that was relayed to the players, with some of them later apologising to the former Hoffenheim and Leipzig boss.
SN’s verdict…
Last season was ugly and the feeling is that the public doesn’t know half of the ins and outs of Rangnick’s tenure at United. On the pitch, you could see that something was fundamentally wrong behind the scenes.
Maguire has failed to recover from his slump last season and as a result, Varane and Lisandro Martinez have formed a strong partnership at the base of United’s defence.
At the time, the meeting did not seem to affect Rangnick. Maguire continued to play for another two months before eventually being dropped in April.
It’s true that maguire should be drop forever,never to start again for all of this season in order to examine steady progress under eric ten hag