Manchester United have dropped an enormous clue that Jadon Sancho’s days with the club are running out.
The winger’s exile from the first team is extreme as he is not is not even allowed to mix or eat with other senior players.
Sancho fell out with Erik ten Hag last month when he effectively accused his manager of being a liar on social media for saying he had been left out of the squad to face Arsenal because he had not trained well.
The club will look to offload the £73million flop in January if he does not apologise to the Dutchman and are open to subsidising his £300,000-per-week wages for a loan exit.
While no individual frame in the video shows everyone who was in the photo, the fact he is not shown is conspicuous.
Even peripheral players such as Donny van de Beek and Tom Heaton are clearly visible in the video.
After six-and-a-half weeks training on his own, there is a growing feeling that even if he were to apologise now, Ten Hag would see it as empty and unacceptable.
The club were open to offers of around £45m in the summer and will take a significant financial hit on him if it means preserving squad discipline.
One of the core tenets of Ten Hag’s Old Trafford reign has been firm authority and he did not shy away from banishing Cristiano Ronaldo after he refused to come on against Tottenham and left the stadium early in October 2022.
On October 1, Sancho was spotted at Carrington for the first time since the spat.
Sancho was seen posing for a picture alongside team-mate Kobbie Mainoo and a young fan at a United 18s match.
In a now-deleted online retort to being dropped, he originally claimed he was being made a ‘scapegoat’ and said Ten Hag’s criticism of him was ‘completely untrue’.
He wrote on X, formerly Twitter: ‘I have conducted myself in training very well this week’ and ‘I’ve been a scapegoat for a long time which isn’t fair!’
Man United have endured a turbulent start to the season and sit tenth in the Premier League table.
They recently launched an investigation into why their first-team squad has had so many injuries and appointed Gary O’Driscoll as head of sports medicine last month.
With major players having had to sit out with injuries, having a player sidelined because of a dispute does not help Ten Hag’s selection issues but he shows no sign of backing down.
