John Mikel Obi joins Zlatan Ibrahimovic to condemn Erik Ten Hag’s handling of Jadon Sancho

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Ex-Chelsea and former Nigerian player, John Mikel Obi, recently commented on the situation between coach Erik Ten Hag and a player, Jadon Sancho, at Manchester United.

Reports claim that the first-team players at Manchester United are siding with coach Erik Ten Hag after the coach’s blunder at a post-match press conference started a problem that saw Jadon Sancho being excluded from playing in the first team and using any of their facilities.

In the press conference that took place after a match Manchester United played against Arsenal, the coach alleged that the reason Jadon Sancho did not play with the team that day was because of his bad performances during training. Sancho went over to his social media handle and refuted this, thereby calling Coach Ten Hag a liar.

Since then, Sancho has been banned by the coach from playing with the first team until he apologises, but he has refused. Speaking on the situation, Mikel Obi argued that the coach messed up, saying that the matter should not have been mentioned during the press conference but rather should have been settled internally.

‘I think that [the coach’s press-conference statement] should be a no-no. Everybody is going about Sancho not apologising,’ said Mikel Obi. ‘I have a different view on that. My view is that the manager shouldn’t have said what he said in public.

‘I wouldn’t come out publicly. When you listen to the ex-United players they’ve all said one thing: When things like this happen before during [Sir Alex] Ferguson, it was dealt with inside the dressing room, he handled it.
It doesn’t matter how he handled it but he handled it. If his decision was for the player not to be involved anymore, that’s it. You cannot come out publicly and criticise a player and say he wasn’t training really well.

‘What do you expect the player to do? You came out publicly, I came out publicly, why do you expect me to apologise? I think it should have been dealt with privately. If he was late to training, he wasn’t performing, there’s a different way to deal with it.”

‘Back in the day John Terry, this is where he got involved, he got involved in cases like this, went to the manager’s office to have a chat, brought the player, because this is a player we need. Sancho is a player you kind of need.’

The deadlock between the player and the coach has gotten to the point where only separating the player and the club seems to be the wisest thing. John Mikel Obi wants the problem to be settled, but he added that the player should move on if the opposite happens.

‘I’m not sitting here trying to defend Jadon but the manager has come out and thrown him under the bus,’ Mikel Obi added.

‘There have been a few bad results, the team is not playing well. The manager thought ‘I’m going to find a scapegoat’. I don’t know how this is going to go but I hope they find a way to resolve it because he’s a top player.

‘He needs to play, he’s young, 23, he hasn’t even reached his peak, still far away from that, but I hope they find a way to resolve it and get him back on the pitch, but if not then he has to move on.’

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has condemned coach Erik Ten Hag’s treatment of big players, using the coach’s handling of Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho as examples. He argued that Ajax, where the coach came from, did not have the quality and calibre of players in his care at Manchester United. Ibrahimovic even said that Erik Ten Hag should be removed.