There is no truer gauge of a footballer’s popularity than the reception they receive from matchgoers. With the return of 10,000 fans through the Old Trafford turnstiles last week, Luke Shaw was treated to rapturous ovations by those back in the Stretford End and the Scoreboard End.
Luke Shaw said: “You only had to watch the final the other day, Chelsea-Leicester, and you could see the fans, you could hear the fans. Even I was just sat there excited listening to them! It was so nice to hear some noise in a stadium again instead of hearing Harry [Maguire] shout at every referee! In general, for everyone, it’s going to be nice to hear voices in the crowd and get back to normality, and hopefully this is just the start for more fans getting back inside the stadium.”
Shaw is particularly glad United will be backed in Gdansk for the Europa League final. The seventh anniversary of his signing is looming yet Shaw has never had a kick in a cup final. He was recovering from a double leg-break for the 2016 FA Cup final and on crutches a year later for the Europa League victory over Ajax. For the 2017 League Cup final and 2018 FA Cup final, he was cut from both matchday squads by Jose Mourinho. Marcos Rojo, Matteo Darmian and Ashley Young all started in Shaw’s absence. Rojo and Darmian signed for United after Shaw but he has outlasted both. A week after Shaw’s 2017 League Cup omission, Mourinho discussed United’s plethora of left-backs: “I think the one that should be in the couple of years the best of all – because potentially he should have all the conditions to be the best of all – is Luke Shaw.”
Shaw has finally attained world-class status, worthy of mention in the same breath as Alphonso Davies and Andy Robertson. Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher both picked him in their Premier League team of the year. Weaker players would have wilted.
Luke Shaw said: “I always believed that I would be able to do it. There were maybe people who were saying, when I was going through the bad times when I wasn’t playing, people were telling me to get out of there and go and play somewhere else. No one wants to leave the biggest club in the world and I believe there was a reason why I was brought here and I didn’t want to leave and not show what I can do. I dug in deep, I didn’t let anyone affect me. A lot of the improvement is, of course, down to me. It’s always good to have that competition to push you, I think I pushed myself before Alex [Telles] got here. I knew where I wanted to get to and I wanted to prove people wrong. A lot of people were doubting me and I always believe in my ability to get back to where I can be. Now, I’m on a much better path and setting a higher bar than I have done before. Consistency for me is key. I don’t want to get too comfortable, I want to keep pushing myself and try to deliver high, consistent performances each week. That’s why I was disappointed with myself the other night against Liverpool (when United lost 4-2). That bar that I set, I was under that. I wasn’t what I normally have been this season and that was why I was very disappointed after that game. I need to set the bar high because I believe I can do that and it only benefits the team and myself when I do push myself. I want to be consistently performing at a high level and I dropped below that. I said to the manager the day after I was really annoyed with myself, blah, blah, blah, talking about it. He agreed with me and said ‘you weren’t bad’. But I’ve set this consistency at a high level and he expects that every game and I agree with him. I need to push myself to that level, too.”
Neville coached Shaw in the England set-up and preached he would take time before taking off.
Luke Shaw said: “I’ve been criticised by them (Neville and Carragher) in the past, obviously for performances and what not. It’s nice to change their minds on what they think of me. They know a lot about football and watch a lot of football, so clearly it means something. But you try not to take too much notice of it and just focus on yourself, keep doing the right things to improve and get better. I think sometimes they’re so spot on with what they say. Their analysis of football is excellent, not just Gary, but both of them. They literally know everything about football! Normally they’re pretty right about everything. But sometimes, maybe recently, they’ve got a couple of things wrong.”
Shaw has wised up from his first months at United as a 19-year-old. He arrived at the San Carlo restaurant on King Street gone 9pm on a Saturday night while injured, oblivious to the image it portrayed of him a mere month after Louis van Gaal had derided his fitness. The paparazzi were tipped and Shaw was papped. He is now settled with his long-time partner, Anouska, and their 18-month boy, Reign. Shaw’s mother and father, Joanna and Paul, follow him and United to all corners of the globe and Paul was gutted not to get in for last year’s introduction to behind-closed-doors football in Linz.
That support network is vital to Shaw Luke Shaw said: “I’ve always had lots of support around me. What I’ve been through, the stuff I’ve gone through, if I didn’t have the support I did I would have struggled even more. I think my family – my mum and dad, especially – and Anouska have supported me so well with what I’ve been through and they’ve obviously seen my struggles and known about them. They’ve been so supportive. It’s funny, because even sometimes when I come home, I think she’ll tell me if she doesn’t think I was my normal self in a game, or something like that. She knows me so well now she knows what needs to be said at different times. You grow up much more when you’ve had a kid. You have to, it’s part of life. I had a conversation with my girlfriend before the start of the season on what my aims were going to be and stuff like that. She’s been really good with me, she’s pushed me, she’s kept me on a straight path, always reminding me on what I said at the start of the season and what I wanted to achieve. Obviously, the benefits of that are showing now. Her and the little one have helped me on the outside of football and it’s nice to know you’re going home to a loving home. They’ve been really good and it’s obviously been really good to see my son grow up so quickly. Her (Anouska), my mum and dad have been really vital to getting me through my bad times.”
That United have chosen Shaw to speak is a sure sign he will get that elusive final start and he is also scheduled to attend Tuesday’s pre-match press conference. In Stockholm four years ago, he was a member of the ‘crutch crew’ that included Rojo, Young and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Eric Bailly, suspended against Ajax, wildly wielded Ibrahimovic’s crutch and tossed it in celebration at the final shrill. Shaw received a winners’ medal but of his four Europa League appearances in 2016-17 only one came in the knockout stages. He was in the dressing room three months earlier at Wembley but stayed in the background.
Luke Shaw reflecting on Stocholm said: “I was really happy for the squad. For the team, for the fans that season, it was a good season. Being there on crutches, it’s always different. Like I said, I’m happy for the team to win it but it’s extremely different when you don’t play in it, it’s not the same feeling. Hopefully, this time I can be involved and try and help the team and personally for myself, be involved in the final and win it. We (the ‘crutch crew’) weren’t involved but, to be honest, we had all played a part in that season in the Europa League, we had played games. We were cheering on from the sidelines. There were videos of Eric throwing the crutches about and that was generally the positive thing we could do.”
Progress is the buzzword at United. They have risen from third to second in a season few predicted they would finish above Manchester City and Liverpool, and are preparing for a first final in three years. Second and silverware would represent a good season but Shaw is already looking ahead.
Luke Shaw continued: “We want to be winning the Premier League, we want to be in the Champions League, challenging for that, but obviously we’re not at the moment. Those are our expectations and aims in the future. We want better. We’re disappointed with how we went out in the FA Cup, so I think it will be a good way to end the season but I think there’s still so much more to come for us. We need to push each other, day in, day out, to achieve what we actually want to achieve. With the squad we’ve got, it’s so talented, we’ve got a brilliant mix of experienced ones and younger ones but even the younger ones have played so many times now they’ve got that experience. The manager was speaking the other day that he would like one or two more signings. I think that we would all welcome that with open arms. Anything that would make our squad better, increase our chances of getting to that next level, will always be good for the team. You only have to look at how competition has pushed me, but if we can get that around the whole place in different positions, I think we can continue to keep pushing each other and it’s only good for the manager to have that sort of competition and hard choices on who to pick. That’s where we need to improve on. I think we’re going in the right direction and you can obviously see the improvement. But if I’m speaking honestly, we’ve still got a lot to learn. Especially this season, we look at the points we’ve lost and where we went wrong and we all know how that happened and why that happened. But we’re going in the right direction and hopefully winning the Europa League will start a new success for United.”
The fans will put their hands together again for Shaw in Gdansk.
