In year two, he only started 12 games in the Premier League and recorded five goals and one assist. A goal or assist nearly every two games, at least in theory, might be enough to warrant him keeping his starting spot the following season but Arsenal had other ideas. The team finished third and appeared to be heading in the right direction. His first season under Mikel Arteta saw him produce 13 goals and six assists in 39 appearances in all competitions. With Pepe and Reiss Nelson on the books, the Crystal Palace icon struggled for game time and ended up moving to Roma after just two seasons in north London. In real life, the idea was for Arsenal to sign him instead of Nicolas Pepe. ![]() ![]() Zaha’s tenure at the Emirates was brief and unfruitful. The only players still in United’s first team from the start of the game save after four seasons were Sancho, Rashford, Paul Pogba, Bruno Fernandes and David de Gea, which shows the ex-City winger became an integral fixture at Old Trafford. ![]() That meant United’s centre-forwards at the end of this simulation were Marcus Rashford, Duvan Zapata and Carlos Vinicius. The club’s transfer policy saw them sell Mason Greenwood for £110 million to Real Madrid, with Anthony Martial also departing. They were one game away from potentially doing the quadruple in 2023-24 but lost to Liverpool in the Champions League semi-finals, which is the furthest they got during Sancho’s four seasons at Old Trafford. Five trophies in four seasons is not a bad haul for a club that had gone three years without one before this game save began.Ī talking point among the United faithful would be the team’s shortcomings in Europe. Still under the guidance of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, they also won the Premier League the season before and a FA Cup the season before that. United won a domestic treble in his fourth season, taking home the Premier League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup. He also stayed injury-free in all four seasons, made the left-wing position his own and led the entire league in assists in 2021-22, with 16 to his name, one more than Kevin De Bruyne. A return of 51 goals and 59 assists in 217 games across all competitions means he averaged a goal contribution every 1.97 games. The former Dortmund forward needed a season to settle in but once he got going, he was a statistical powerhouse who regularly lit up Old Trafford. Manchester United fans clamoured for the arrival of Sancho, a player they hoped would be a permanent fixture on the right wing for many years, and he held up his end of the bargain in FM21. The results were pretty much what you might expect had he not joined. He eventually hung up his boots to embark on a career in management aged 37 and left City with a feeling of “what if”? The club paid him more than £200 million in wages across four years. In Messi’s defence, he was awarded man of the match 34 times in his first two seasons, suggesting he was at his impeccable best but perhaps those around him failed to deliver. City reached the semi-finals of the Champions League in three consecutive seasons, but never made it down to the last two, with his final year producing a disappointing early exit in the round of 16. ![]() Messi’s remit when moving to Manchester was simple: help Guardiola’s side win their elusive first-ever Champions League title. Those contributions only produced two Premier League titles, one FA Cup and two victories in the Community Shield. Relative to Messi’s high standards, it’s by far his strongest output. Fifty goals and 36 assists across all competitions in 189 games is a pretty remarkable return for a player approaching his late thirties. That came to an abrupt halt under Pep Guardiola in England, as he only scored 10 league goals once in four seasons, with the other three seasons producing just 20 Premier League goals in total. The answer? Relatively mediocre.īefore the start of the 2020-21 campaign, the Argentine had enjoyed a streak of scoring at least 23 goals in his last 12 seasons. Stoke didn’t get promoted in this game save so we’ll never quite know if Messi can do it on a cold windy night at the bet365 Stadium, but FM21 did provide an insight into how he’d fare in England’s top division.
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