Former Chelsea player John Obi Mikel has slammed Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag for ‘throwing Jadon Sancho under the bus’ as the young English star’s ongoing feud with the Dutchman continues.
Yesterday it was revealed that Man United will look to offload Sancho in January if he refuses to apologise to Ten Hag for his statements after he was dropped from the matchday squad against Arsenal.
This comes after the 23-year-old was banned from using all first-team facilities at Carrington after he claimed he was being made a ‘scapegoat’ in an online retort.
Now, former Premier League midfielder Mikel, 36, has claimed Sir Alex Ferguson would never have dealt with this type of situation in the same way.
‘Everybody is going about Sancho not apologising, I have a different view on that. My view is that the manager shouldn’t have said what he said in public,’ he told The Obi One podcast.
‘I wouldn’t come out publicly. When you listen to the ex-United players they’ve all said one thing: When things like this happen before during [Sir Alex] Ferguson, it was dealt with inside the dressing room, he handled it.
‘It doesn’t matter how he handled it but he handled it. If his decision was for the player not to be involved anymore, that’s it. You cannot come out publicly and criticise a player and say he wasn’t training really well.’
Mikel, who turned down a move to the Red Devils in 2006 in favour of Chelsea, added: ‘What do you expect the player to do? You came out publicly, I came out publicly, why do you expect me to apologise? I think it should have been dealt with privately.
‘Back in the day John Terry, this is where he got involved, he got involved in cases like this, went to the manager’s office to have a chat, brought the player, because this is a player we need. Sancho is a player you kind of need.’
