Cover a lot of ground, but also importantly, make slide tackles and recovery tackles, which most players can’t. We see players often beaten in midfield, and particularly in the case of smaller players, they’re simply unable to recover. They can’t really ever get back round ball side.
Someone like Collier, with his long legs, he doesn’t need to. He can hook his foot round on the slide tackle, recover the ball for his side. That’s effective. That makes him a good ball winner. He’s also just strong in the battle.
Again, he has a big frame. He can win aerial duels, but also ground duels as well. Physically, he has that capability. And that’s a key sign for a young player trying to make the step to senior football. That is often the biggest kind of sticking point.
Technically, they might be strong, but physically, if you can’t cope, you’re always going to struggle. This man doesn’t have that problem because physically he’s very good. He covers, like I said, he covers ground well. He covers in front of his defence.
He kind of slides and screens side to side, again, in front of his centre-backs. This is his real area of operation, if you like. This is his zone of the pitch. This is where he is going to do his work. On the ball, off the ball. This is what you get from him. And I think that’s a really good skill set to have.
There is potential that he could add value to Manchester United in some sort of squad role. Should Manchester United go sign a big ball-winning midfielder in the summer, or maybe even two, having Collier as then sort of the understudy to them certainly could work. I think my personal preference, though, would probably be to get this young man out on loan and really test him at a senior level.
I personally don’t think he is ready for Manchester United and the starting XI at this moment in time. But that is just my opinion. I think he needs a loan move to try and kind of test what he can do. Test his ability to add those different things to his game, whether that be his ball carrying or his long-range passing.
See how physically he copes in a league like the Championship, for example. Again, I think he has all the tools to do it, but let’s actually see it in practice. That would kind of be my next step with Collier.
I can’t talk too much about him because, again, I still have only watched 9, 10 games. That’s not that great a sample size. But in terms of what I’ve seen so far, could he be a useful player for United? As a squad player, yeah, he’s a proper utility player for the Brighton Academy.
By the way, there he made his debut for the under-18s at 15 years old. He’s a good player, but he played left-back for them at times. He played centre-back. He played midfield. This is a proper squad utility player, and United need that. United do need that. So Collier could certainly have a future, and hopefully that answers some of your guys’ questions.
Hopefully we see more in pre-season and moving forward into next season. And we can figure out a bit more in-depth what he really is about. But for today, I think I’m happy to wrap it up there. So let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. But apart from that, we are finished. So thank you guys for watching. I hope you have enjoyed it.
