I’m aware that as soon as most of you clicked on this link you were saying, “Yes Pauly, you are absolutely nuts to think that Manchester United should be signing Jermain Defoe of all people.”
But please, hear me out, because this move may actually make all the sense in the world.
Manchester Untied’s striker situation for next season has suddenly been thrown into flux. At the moment, there are only two strikers that will certainly be at Old Trafford next season, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial, and their combined age is just 40. Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s knee injury will rule him out until at least January at which point it may make more sense for him to opt out of his contract this summer to sign with an MLS team and be fully fit to start the next season.
That leaves United with a predicament. They’ll need a third striker because you can’t possibly go into a season with just two strikers. You also can’t expect players as young as Martial and Rashford to be able to carry the team for the entire season (though Martial did come close to doing so last year).
United can’t just sign any striker. Kylian Mbappe, who is currently tearing up Europe with Monaco and will be a sensational player for many years to come, is a player that everyone would love on their team. But does it really make sense for the club to add another teen striker that needs games in order to develop, let alone to play for a manager that normally doesn’t play nice with kids?
However, with budding stars in Rashford and Martial, they also can’t go in the other direction and throw a lot of money at someone like Robert Lewandowski, who would need to be in the starting XI every game. That would further stunt the development of Rashford who this season has mostly had to either watch from the bench or play out wide to accommodate Zlatan.
What United need is something in the middle. They need a veteran striker to simply provide cover. He’ll mostly be used off the bench, but he’ll start a few games here and be there simply to provide Rashford and Martial with break.
They need someone like what Louis Saha was for them in 2008 behind Wayne Rooney and Carlos Tevez. Between knee injuries, Saha appeared 17 times for United that season scoring five goals. He started just six games and scored twice in those six. Or how about someone like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer the season before when he scored seven times in 19 appearances, nearly all of which came as a sub?
Those totals don’t sound high, but those United teams also featured an up-and-coming Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. The current version does not have a player like that, so what United need is a striker that is capable of bagging somewhere around 10-12 goals in the Premier League should they need him to, which unfortunately rules out Wayne Rooney these days.
To recap, they need a veteran striker that doesn’t need to play every day, will understand his role, and can score somewhere around 10 goals in the league. There’s only one current striker that fits that mold.
Jermain Defoe.
Of course the idea sounds ridiculous, mainly because not only has Defoe already taken a stint in MLS (before realizing he was not in fact washed up and thus returned to England) but also because the closest Defoe has ever come to playing for a remotely top team were his stints at Tottenham in the mid oughts.
If (read: when) Sunderland get relegated at the end of the season, all signs point to Defoe leaving the club. He could easily sign for a midtable team like West Ham, or even Everton, and play almost every game.
That’s what makes the Manchester United option intriguing. They can offer Defoe something he’s never had before; the chance to play for a top club and maybe even the chance to play in the Champions League.
Defoe has scored 29 goals over the past two seasons with bottom feeder Sunderland. Even in limited opportunities, imagine what he should be able to do playing in a team with far more talented players.
Signing Defoe still makes sense even after United inevitably throw as much money as they can at Antoine Griezmann. Griezmann is more of a no. 10, not a lone striker that would play in the kind of system Jose Mourinho prefers. Griezmann would play behind the striker leaving United with just as much of a need for someone up front.
As crazy as it sounds, United could do a lot worse than Jermain Defoe.
