The Red Devils had the exciting Sweden winger on their books but decided to make an expensive and wild bet on the Brazilian instead
The date is February 23, 2022, the city is Madrid and Manchester United fans have a new favourite player as well as a new favourite chant. Their teenage idol has silenced the usually deafening Atletico Madrid supporters at the Metropolitano and all that can be heard is a new version of a 1990s smash hit.
"Rhythm is a dancer, Anthony Elanga, come and stop him if you dare," sing the visiting fans. "Comes from Scandinavia, he's United's saviour, scoring goals from everywhere." Elanga has just equalised for United in the Spanish capital and, four days previously, he had scored in a 4-2 win against rivals Leeds.
It helps that he has been with the club since he was 12 and is a pacey winger with tricky feet, following in a fine tradition of United favourites from George Best to Ryan Giggs to Cristiano Ronaldo. There is a sense that he is saving United, too, not just from defeat to Atletico, but also from a gloomy season in which they have already sacked Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and suffered a series of humiliating defeats.
Elanga is also an exciting new figure for United fans to believe in less than a month after that shocking audio of Mason Greenwood emerged, leading to his arrest and his banishment from the squad. The future looks bright for Elanga at Old Trafford.
But fast forward two years and Elanga has left the club, joining Nottingham Forest last summer for a paltry free of £15 million ($19m), having made just five Premier League starts under Erik ten Hag compared to 14 the previous campaign under Solskjaer and Ralf Rangnick.
Meanwhile, Antony, the player who was signed for a whopping £85m ($107m) and took Elanga's place in the team, cannot even get in the starting line-up amid an injury crisis. As United head to Nottingham Forest in the fifth round of the FA Cup, the last chance to save their season, it is tempting to conclude that they put their faith in the wrong winger called Ant(h)ony…
Getty ImagesNot quite justifying the hype
It is worth pointing out that the initial hype about Elanga generated was slightly wide of the mark and the Swede was not yet ready to be United's saviour. He was still only 19 and struggled to sparkle in the second-leg defeat against Atletico Madrid and in the numerous other matches he started in the final stretch of that dismal campaign, in which United recorded their lowest ever points total in the Premier League.
But he had shown enough promise not to be completely written off either, yet that is what Erik ten Hag seemed to do when he took over later that summer. The manager did give Elanga three consecutive starts early on in the season against Liverpool, Southampton and Leicester and he did not quite deliver, but he can't have been playing too badly as United won all three. By that point, however, Ten Hag had effectively undermined the Swede by urging the club to sign Antony from Ajax and at an extortionately high cost.
The manager had naturally wanted extra reinforcements after the opening defeats to Brighton and Brentford but if there was one area of the squad that definitely did not need addressing, it was wide forwards. Antony's arrival took the number of wingers to four, joining Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Elanga. It was five if you counted Alejandro Garnacho, who had come on the pre-season tour and soon began knocking on the first team's door.
Garnacho's stunning performances deservedly saw him get more and more opportunities and Elanga continued to be marginalised. And this was despite the fact that Antony's promising start (three goals in his first three games, a club record) had quickly given way to a barren period in which the Brazilian contributed zero goals and zero assists in the league in the space of six months.
Elanga ended the campaign with just seven starts in all competitions. His last appearance was hardly a nice memory, being introduced for the final five minutes of the humiliating 7-0 demolition by Liverpool at Anfield, when United were already six goals down.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesTwelve goal contributions
Elanga was one of many players the club had decided to sell last summer but one of the few there was legitimate interest in. Forest, who love a transfer nearly as much as Chelsea, were glad to take Elanga off United's hands and the forward knew he had to make the move to get his stalling career back on track.
"It is the right time now for the perfect next step in my career. I'm someone who lives for football and I need to be on the pitch every week doing what I love," Elanga wrote in an emotional farewell statement. "We'll always have 'Rhythm is a dancer'. It meant the world to me and my family every time that we heard that chant."
Elanga has been superb for Forest, lighting up an otherwise tricky season for the Tricky Trees. He needed less than two minutes of action off the bench away to Arsenal to get his first assist for Forest and did not take long to get his first goal, the only strike in a historic win at Chelsea.
In 18 starts and seven appearances as a sub, Elanga has five goals and seven assists in the Premier League. That's more goal contributions than any other Forest player and indeed any United player. And it's a darn sight better than Antony, who has no goals and no assists in the league despite making 20 appearances.
Getty'I wanted a fresh start'
United might well be looking back at the decision to get rid of Elanga as one of many recruitment errors they have made in the last few years and which Sir Jim Ratcliffe's INEOS experts will be seeking to put right now they have taken control of the club's football operation.
Looking at how well Elanga has done at the City Ground, Forest got a real bargain while United badly sold themselves short in accepting just £15m for a player who has out-scored every United player bar Scott McTominay and Hojlund. Elanga, however, does not appear to be looking back.
“Sometimes football is like that, it might not always work somewhere,” Elanga told The Times. “I had seen what he [Ten Hag] did at Ajax so I was looking forward to it but I just didn’t get the opportunities.
“It was difficult but it was needed because I wanted to play and I didn’t want to spend another season just playing 10 minutes or not playing for 10 games. I wanted a fresh start but I knew it wouldn’t be easy leaving a club that I had been at for nine years."
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Getty ImagesAntony still struggling
While Elanga has thrived away from United, Antony has continued to flop while remaining with the Red Devils. And the City Ground has mixed memories for the Brazilian. Last year he broke his six-month goal drought by scoring for United and got a rare assist by setting up Diogo Dalot in a sweeping move.
But in December he had one of his worst ever games for United in a grim 2-1 defeat. To make matters worse, he was outshone by Elanga. Former United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel did not hold back in his criticism: "He doesn't give much to the team. He frustrates his team-mates. It's really frustrating. He's had an opportunity for a long time, this is a player that hasn't scored this season, he's not made an assist and he's not scored, it's like he's not really understanding the game."
Antony has not started a league match since that drab performance at the City Ground. He has, at least, managed to get off the mark for the season, getting his only goal and assist in the 4-2 win over fourth division Newport County in the FA Cup fourth round.
After that match he gave a defiant interview in which he vowed to put things right. "I fought hard to reach the levels of playing for this club, I know I can build on yesterday’s performance and continue to show my qualities," he said. "I pushed myself day after day for better performances.
"I will continue to completely close myself off to improve and play the football that United hired me to do. The whole club, every fan, deserves the best from each one of us. United is one of the biggest clubs in the world, where everyone wants to be and it's where I want to build my story."