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Can Javier Hernandez seize his last chance at Manchester United?

By on August 26, 2015

Sir Alex Ferguson was a master of the art of substitution. Tony Strudwick, Ferguson’s head fitness coach for the final five years of the Scot’s reign at Manchester United, said (in a presentation at the 2015 Sporting Analytics conference in London) that Fergie built his games around the final ten minutes –“Fergie time” – and United’s knack for late goals didn’t come without effort, with super substitutes being an integral part of the plan.

Perhaps the defining moment of Ferguson’s twenty-six years in charge of United was the Red Devils’ famous late comeback against Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League, sparked by substitutes Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Teddy Sheringham.

Super-subs like Solskjær are the twelfth man in an eleven men game. They make their names by providing just the right catalyst at the right time.  When things are going poorly, super-subs are supposed to save the day, though as Javier Hernandez found out today, it can also go the other way.

Hernandez, in his time at United, became the club’s latest super-sub. In part, as is often the case, because other starters kept the player out of the starting eleven – in Chicharito’s case the players in question were Robin van Persie and Wayne Rooney.

Chicharito signed at Old Trafford in the summer of 2010 after impressive for Mexican side Guadalajara and the Mexican national team. In his first two seasons at United, the forward made fifteen and eighteen league starts, respectively, along with twenty-two more appearances as a sub. More or less, Hernandez was always in or around the periphery.

Then Van Persie joined in the summer of the 2012 season and in two full seasons at United since, Chicharito hasn’t made half as many Premier League starts as he did in his first two seasons at the club. When Ferguson left and David Moyes joined, Hernandez’s role as a substitute did increase, in part down to Van Persie’s regression. In many ways, he is the perfect super-sub being quick, skillful and an out-and-out poacher.

But Hernandez was on the fringe of the unsuccessful team Louis van Gaal inherited when he took over for Moyes a year-and-a-half ago, and the diminutive forward was promptly loaned to Real Madrid for the season, where he enhanced his skills as a bench-warmer but not much else. In the end, Hernandez came back to United worse than when he left it. Even United’s own columnist James Tuck said that he “thought we’d seen the last of Chicha in the red shirt when he joined Real.”

This season, Van Gaal has openly admitted that “Chicharito will be the substitute” to Rooney, the same as before; but should the little pea impress, the Dutchman also left the door open for the Mexican international to take the starting spot while Rooney cameos in a No10 role. With Van Persie and Falcao having left over the summer, Chicharito is currently one of only three recognized forwards at Old Trafford alongside Rooney and youngster James Wilson.

At the age of twenty-seven, reaching his peak, Hernandez has a golden opportunity to break into United’s starting eleven. Yet having appeared as a substitute on three occasions so far this season, Hernandez hasn’t impressed, scoring not one goal. The problem is that Chicharito has sat the bench so much over the past few years, he might not know where that little spark that makes substitutes so great is to be found anymore.

A penalty in United’s second leg of their Champions League playoff tie with Club Brugge seemed the perfect time for Hernandez to get back on Van Gaal’s good side.  Hernandez was brought on by Louis van Gaal in the sixty-fourth minute for Ander Herrera, whose final touch before coming off provided United’s fourth and final goal of the night and with ten minutes to go, Hernandez stepped up to take a penalty that Memphis Depay had won. Only fate would have it that the forward slipped and sent his penalty wide of the post. Although the miss meant absolutely nothing to a tie that was already firmly in United’s hands, Van Gaal’s look to Ryan Giggs still managed to tell the whole story. And while the slip may not have been Chicharito’s fault, sending a ninety-first-minute sitter into row zed most definitely was. It’s still early in the season, but Hernandez won’t want to miss any more late chances to get his United career back on track.

Photo credit: Jon Candy, via Flickr

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.