Manchester United great Paul Scholes has explained exactly what Christian Eriksen and Casemiro — as well as Bruno Fernandes — can teach Scott McTominay and Fred to make them better footballers.
United have undergone plenty of change in their midfield under Erik ten Hag with the likes of Paul Pogba, Nemanja Matic, Juan Mata and Jesse Lingard all leaving the club. Eriksen and Casemiro have moved to Old Trafford to replace them and the former has impressed Ten Hag enough to earn a regular place in the starting line-up, despite arriving without a transfer fee.
Currently, McTominay has shown signs of improvements and has kept his place in the team. However, this has not stopped Scholes suggesting how the Scottish international could learn from a player like Casemiro.
Speaking to Gary Neville on The Overlap, Scholes explained: "[I look for] intelligence. Clever players with a brain.
"[Eriksen] is the perfect example of a player who plays with intelligence, he plays with his brain. He is just a clever player, he knows where he is on the pitch and he knows where other people are on the pitch."
When asked why he often tells midfielders to 'look over their shoulders', Scholes spoke about where United have been lacking in the past. He said: "I don't remember which game it was but they were beaten by somebody and I was a little bit hard on Scott and Fred but they had their backs to goal all the time.
"When they are receiving the ball with their back to goal all the time it is the only way they can go. A midfielder should always receive the ball on the half turn so I can still see you (points at Neville) and my forward.
"You saw Casemiro did it two weeks ago and Eriksen does it all the time. You see the goal they scored, don't remember who it was against, but Eriksen received it on the half turn, passed it forward to [Bruno] Fernandes who was also on the half turn and they score.
"Small things like that just annoy me because I think if you are playing at Manchester United you should be capable of doing that. You should expect that, shouldn't you?"
Source: m.allfootballapp.com