“Give Ighalo a Chance!” – says ex-Nigeria striker Ezeji

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The Ex-Watford striker was brought in on loan from Shanghai Shenhua last season and his contract was renewed till next year. However, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer forming a formidable attacking trio consisting of Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood, his place was left on the bench.

Can he break into the starting 11?

Ighalo has had an impact for his boyhood club, with scoring 5 goals in 8 appearances in the Europa League and FA Cup, however, he did not play more than 20 minutes in a single match in the 2019/20 Premier League season.

Ex Nigerian striker, Victor Ezeji believes that Ighalo should start searching for new shores if he wants more playing time, as he would not get that at Old Trafford at the moment.

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“It wasn’t really nice that a player’s contract was renewed and you didn’t even allow him to play up to 20 minutes of any Premier League game. That is not encouraging. It makes a player lose all the confidence he has built over time,” he told Goal, “If Ighalo was still having regular games to play, probably his confidence would have grown and probably Manchester United would have even tried to buy him permanently, but that didn’t happen.”

Ezeji also contributed some of the problems to the delay in season cause of the coronavirus, “the Covid situation did not help him, because if not for Covid, [Marcus] Rashford would still have been out until the end of the season, and when Rashford recovered, because of the belief Ole has in Rashford, he had to bring him back into the team. And then you can see that [Anthony] Martial was firing on all cylinders, same as [Mason] Greenwood, so there was no way Ole was going to drop any of those guys for Ighalo.”

He does criticise Ole for not giving Ighalo the chance he deserved, “But where I will fault Ole is that even when these guys are not meeting up in some games, I think he should have tried Ighalo.”

Manchester United face Crystal Palace on Saturday and by the looks of it, Ighalo will start on the bench.

Also read: Manchester United Prodigy: Anthony Elanga could follow in the footsteps of Mason Greenwood.