{"id":880460,"date":"2026-10-13T04:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T04:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/880460\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T04:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T04:44:12","slug":"man-utd-gerrard-insists-big-money-summer-signing-is-not-a-manchester-united-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/880460\/","title":{"rendered":"Man Utd: Gerrard insists big-money summer signing is ‘not a Manchester United player’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steven Gerrard has written off Andrey Santos after 83 minutes of Premier League football for Manchester United<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Santos joined United in a \u00a350m move this summer from Chelsea, where he was a bit-part player last season having impressed on loan at Strasbourg.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old was part of a midfield rebuild at Old Trafford which also saw Youri Tielemans and Carlos Baleba join the club for \u00a335m and \u00a365m respectively.<\/p>\n

Baleba impressed off the bench on his debut for United against Tottenham on Saturday, having missed the start of the season through injury, while Tielemans has looked suspect at best alongside Kobbie Mainoo.<\/p>\n

READ: Premier League winners and losers: Man City, Wirtz, Benitez, Glasner, Brighton, Aaronson, O\u2019Neil<\/a><\/p>\n

Santos hasn\u2019t started in the Premier League since the opening day defeat to Hull City, with his only other start this season coming in the 3-2 Carabao Cup loss to Brighton.<\/p>\n

And Gerrard has seen enough to know that \u201che\u2019s not a Manchester United player\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure Andrey Santos was the right signing for Manchester United at \u00a350m,\u201d Gerrard said on The Overlap.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think to play in Manchester United\u2019s midfield every single game, every single weekend, you\u2019d expect to compete for the Premier League and the Champions League.<\/p>\n

\u201cForget the other cups, because obviously you try and win them as you go along, but the priority is the league and the Champions League. That has been for decades, from whatever I\u2019ve known and competed against United.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour midfield players have got to be world-class, they\u2019ve got to be world-class, they\u2019ve got to be consistently world-class, because when it comes to the business end, you\u2019re going to be competing against, if you go to Arsenal, Declan Rice, for example, he\u2019s creeping into that level, and Martin Odegaard, they\u2019re world-level players.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiverpool, maybe not right now, but when they were challenging for the league, Fabinho, Georginio Wijnaldum, that level of player.<\/p>\n

\u201cManchester United need world-class midfielders, potential ones, or ones that are already ready to play at that level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (Kobbie) Mainoo\u2019s a really good player. He\u2019s nowhere near that yet, nowhere near world level yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cSantos, he\u2019s a good player, but for me, he\u2019s not a Manchester United player. To be consistent week in, week out and affect games, when it comes down to when the prizes are given out, or Champions League semi-finals, quarter-finals, I think he\u2019d be found out against PSG. I think he\u2019d be found out against the Real Madrid midfield, the Barcelona midfield.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s a bit short, in my opinion. (Youri) Tielemans is a good Premier League-level player. Bruno Fernandes is the one that\u2019s world-class, but he\u2019s alone in there in terms of that level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played against Michael Carrick, who was underestimated. He was a top, top player. Roy Keane was world-class. Paul Scholes was world-class. Ryan Giggs used to play in there sometimes, world-class. David Beckham could come in there, world-class. Wayne Rooney coming to overload the midfield, world-class.<\/p>\n

\u201cManchester United\u2019s midfield is way off that level. It\u2019s way off that level.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT: Man Utd flop set for Atletico Madrid return to give Carrick false Old Trafford hope<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Gerrard has written off Andrey Santos after 83 minutes of Premier League football for Manchester United. Santos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":880461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[87202,424,3788,3,403,99,50234],"class_list":["post-880460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-andrey-santos","tag-front-page","tag-manchester-united","tag-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-steven-gerrard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}