If Luke Shaw is playing well, it usually means Manchester United are too

Think back to the last time a Manchester United side entered the new year and looked capable of a sustained spell in the upper reaches of the Premier League table. You might recall their left-back was playing pretty well then too.

On the way to 2020-21’s runners-up finish under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Luke Shaw was enjoying a renaissance, ending the campaign in the team of the season and as United’s players’ player of the year. There was a compelling argument to be made that he was the second-most important to United’s style of play behind the influential – perhaps too influential – Bruno Fernandes.

Rank this season’s squad in the same way and Shaw might not immediately place as highly, but that is more the result of a new manager and a new approach. Compared to Solskjaer, Erik ten Hag’s style is more focused around a system than individuals. There is not as clear a hierarchy of influence. And so, when a player stands out, it is arguably even more impressive.

Shaw has done exactly that since returning from the World Cup, notably in the “fabulous” displays as a left-sided centre-half against Nottingham Forest (a 3-0 win on December 27) and Wolverhampton Wanderers (the 1-0 victory on New Year’s Eve) that had Ten Hag delivering rare, fulsome praise.

Yet the good news for some of United’s other, more established centre-halves is that an in-form Shaw is too good not to play at left-back, as he demonstrated last night against Bournemouth.

Shaw was part of a back four that has not been seen on the pitch regularly since those days of Solskjaer ended nearly 14 months ago. There was a time, during the 2019-20 campaign, when he and Aaron Wan-Bissaka flanking Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelof was a first-choice defence, one that went through a whole Premier League season successfully conceding less than a goal a game.

Three of that quartet are now distinctly second-choice at United.

Shaw is the only one who can count on starting, because he is capable of combining defensive stability with game-changing moments in the final third. Or in the case of the pass that created the opening for United’s third against Bournemouth, from just inside the opposition half.

Shaw’s passing is a sometimes under-appreciated aspect of his game, though if he can play more balls like the one lofted over Bournemouth’s defence for Fernandes to square into Marcus Rashford’s feet, it will start to garner more attention.

There was another from almost the same spot a week earlier against Forest — lower, flatter and sent down the left wing rather than across to the right, but just as treacherous to defend and almost slipping in Alejandro Garnacho. Yet this one was better, timed perfectly to match Fernandes’ arcing run and expose a moment’s indecision in Bournemouth’s back line.

Of course by that stage, he had already scored: starting the move for United’s second through a neat combination with Rashford, progressing it with a bursting run into the centre of the pitch and then finishing it by carrying his run into the box and poking in Garnacho’s cross.