For those of you who have woken up this morning and done your usual social media scroll, you might have noticed a large number of Manchester United fans raving about the potential return of Patrice Evra. The Frenchman spent over 8 years at the club and will forever be a legend at Old Trafford and an all-round fan favourite. He made over 250 appearances in the United shirt, winning almost everything there is to win, before being sold for a mere £1.3m to Juventus as one of Van Gaal’s first casualties in his rebuilding process.
But could Patrice be set for a sensational return to Old Trafford? According to a lot of very excited United fans, yes!
Rio Ferdinand, who played with Evra for six years, posted a message on Instagram this morning directed at his former colleague. The post showed a picture of the duo celebrating in what was Ferguson’s last season at Manchester United, with the caption: “Throwing it out there… @patrice.evra I’m hearing thru social media u coming home bro?!? Talk to me! ? #MUFC”.
Now of course, it doesn’t take a genius to know that rumours can circulate fast in football, and that Rio might have jumped the gun a little with his post – or, of course, tried to cause a stir himself. But.. Patrice Evra had only yesterday uploaded a cryptic post of his own.
Evra posted a photo of a rather happy looking chimpanzee just yesterday, captioned: “Only my monkey knows what’s will happening next ???I love this game ???ahahahahahahah”
Now with that, let’s look at why Patrice Evra’s potential move back to Old Trafford would be so special.
First of all, he’s still got it. Despite his tender age of 35, the full-back is still playing at the highest level with Juventus, and represented France at Euro 2016 last summer. His experience would be priceless to the team on a whole, he has won almost all there is to win at club level and played with some of the finest players to have ever braced the game. He would be a huge help for youngster Luke Shaw, who was brought in at United in 2014 to replace Evra. Shaw has bags of potential, but is yet to fully cement his place in any manager’s starting XI. Evra could certainly teach him a thing or two about defending. As well as all this, we’d have Evra’s quality Instagam updates to look forward to. More importantly though, Pat would be home.
Mourinho has got previous with bringing club legends back. Didier Drogba made an incredible Chelsea return in 2014 and helped to win the league title a year later.
In terms of where Juventus stand with letting their man go, Evra has only made five Serie A appearances for Juventus this season and manager Pastorello said last month there is interest from other clubs.
He said: “I have to admit that, like all footballers, he would like to be playing more often.”
“I’ve been receiving a lot of calls, and I don’t know where the rumours are coming from, but Patrice is not at all unhappy at Juventus.”
“I can only say that there is nothing definite right now about him leaving.”
[Quotes via MEN]
Only time will tell whether or not Patrice will return, but let’s hope some sort of deal can be done!