Luke Shaw has admitted he needs to earn Jose Mourinho’s trust after struggling to convince the Portuguese of his first-team credentials since his appointment as Manchester United manager this summer.
Shaw, 21, played the full 90 minutes as United overcame Manchester City in the EFL Cup fourth round on Wednesday evening, but the England defender was forced to sit on the sidelines as an unused squad member during the 4-0 Premier League defeat at Chelsea at the weekend.
Having arrived at Old Trafford in a £28m move from Southampton as a 19-year-old following the 2014 World Cup, Shaw has endured a turbulent two years at United, with Louis van Gaal criticising his form and fitness during his first season before then suffering a season-ending broken leg while playing against PSV Eindhoven last September.
Mourinho’s arrival has coincided with another downturn in Shaw’s fortunes, with the former Chelsea manager recently preferring Daley Blind at left-back having claimed two years ago that he aborted Chelsea’s interest in Shaw due to his wage demands.
“If we pay to a 19-year-old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead,” Mourinho said at the time. “We would have killed our stability with financial fair play and killed the stability in our dressing room.
“Because when you pay that much to a 19-year-old kid – a good player, fantastic player – but when you pay that amount of money, the next day, we would have had players knocking on our door.”
Two years on, Shaw is still searching for the consistency with which to prove Mourinho wrong, but he admits that the 90 minutes against City offers him a platform on which to build upon.
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