Manchester United’s technical director Darren Fletcher has given valuable insights into how the club usually goes about the decision to send young players out on loan.
In an interview with club media, Fletcher revealed that the choice to send a youngster to go out on loan is carefully arrived at after thorough research and consultations are made so as to settle on a suitable transfer destination.
Fletcher revealed that the loanees are carefully watched every game by United representatives, who are tasked with compiling regular reports about the players’ progress and how they are fairing under their temporary employers.
Conversations are also held with the players themselves to check on them and inquire about their personal feelings with respect to how their loan spells are going.
Fletcher said, “Les Parry is probably the one with the closest contact. He’ll be up at the games regularly, with a few of our other scouts and loan scouts, and Les meets Will [Fish] after the games, speaks to him, talks about his development plan and then that gets transferred back to the relevant people in the club.”
“There’s constant conversation around young players because it’s a big part of the development. We all have regular meetings, so we have a regular pathway and player meetings, talking about squad planning, progression and the next stages. We talk about January and all of our [youth] loan players have recall clauses, six months into it.”
Fletcher added, “Not that that is the plan it’s just for all eventualities really. So we’ll talk about do we trigger that loan for the rest of the season or is there another plan? And that can be because they’re not playing or because they are playing but they’re ready for something different.”
The former United midfielder remarked that information gained from monitoring the loanees is relayed to other staff members including football director John Murtough, Nic Cox in the Academy and of course Erik ten Hag.
As per Fletcher, “everything is aligned” and there are always a lot of moving parts with regard to managing a player’s loan spell, but the ultimate goal is to ensure their development.
An academy graduate who came to the fore during Fletcher’s interview is Will Fish, who is currently with Scottish Premiership side Hibernian.
The 39-year-old mentioned that it was an easy decision to let Fish re-join Nick Montgomery’s side since his first time with the club was extremely successful.
Fletcher hailed the progress displayed by Fish and the defender’s hard work that has rendered him an important member of the team in such a short space of time.