just took a look at the United players that got their first team debuts under van Gaal. It's a crazy long list.
in 2014-15
Jesse Lingard
Andreas Pereira
Patrick McNair
Tyler Blackett (on loan)
Michael Keane (sold)
Tom Thorpe (sold)
Saidy Janko (sold)
Marnick Vermijl (sold)
Reece James (sold)
in 2015-16
Cameron Borthwick-Jackson
Guillermo Varela
Donald Love
Joe Riley
Marcus Rashford
Regan Poole
plus those youngsters who have at least made the bench this season:
Joel Pereira
Dean Henderson
Axel Tuanzebe
Sean Goss
James Weir
obviously some of those will never make it and have only played because of the thin squad (which is entirely LVGs fault), but it's still an impressive list ... not very often that a big club will hand debuts to so many youngsters. I remember all this talk about United selling their identity of bringing through youth players when they sold the likes of Welbeck and Cleverley in favour of expensive new signings, but it seems that was completely premature. As a United fan that's great to see, especially since there have been tons of articles suggesting that Uniteds youth setup is crap in comparison to Citys. Got to hand it to Warren Joyce, Nicky Butt and the other coaches involved in the youth setups, they have done some great work. Especially Borthwick-Jackson looks a real talent and Varela has been fine too. No idea about Riley and Rashford yet, but they obviously had fantastic debuts on Thursday.
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