5 players who are criminally misused by their clubs

#5 Chris Smalling

The development of Chris Smalling has been painfully blocked by Jose Mourinho

One of the few plus points of Louis van Gaal’s time in charge of Manchester United was the development of Chris Smalling. Signed by United in 2010, Smalling’s career appeared to be stalling prior to the arrival of the legendary Dutch manager – one pundit described his playing style as “casually sloppy” – but under Van Gaal, he developed into one of the Premier League’s toughest defenders.

Smalling featured in 35 of United’s 38 league games in 2015/16 and was also blossoming into a promising defender for England too, but all that has changed since the arrival of Jose Mourinho. For reasons unknown to basically anyone but Mourinho himself, Smalling has been largely frozen out of United’s starting line-up.

He only featured 18 times in the league last season and saw 18 other players get more playing time than him.

With Mourinho also signing Eric Bailly and now Victor Lindelof, it’s quite clear that he doesn’t rate Smalling at all. In fact, for the majority of the time the Portuguese manager has preferred the likes of Phil Jones, Marcos Rojo and even youngster Axel Tuanzebe over him. The way back to United’s starting line-up seems painfully blocked.

Given Smalling’s form in 2015/16 you can’t call it anything but misuse. Smalling isn’t a perfect central defender but he was arguably United’s standout player in Van Gaal’s last season and he was certainly their most improved.

For Mourinho to freeze him out in this way is baffling, and unfortunately for him, he doesn’t appear to have many suitors, meaning he could be stuck at Old Trafford in the shadows.