Alejandro Garnacho's telling post about JJ Gabriel suggests Man Utd have dodged a bullet

· Mirror

OPINION: Alejandro Garnacho may have just proven why Manchester United shouldn't worry about losing wantaway wonderkid JJ Gabriel

Fifteen is an age usually reserved for stressing over GCSE mocks and applying acne cream. JJ Gabriel, however, operates on a somewhat loftier plane of self-importance.

Manchester United's latest academy messiah has formally requested to leave the club. Gabriel is, by all accounts, a generational talent, but would losing him for nothing really be as catastrophic as it sounds?

On the face of it, the answer is a shuddering yes. Gabriel is an absurdly gifted footballer, a boy who glides through midfield with the kind of precocious, disrespectful ease that makes defenders contemplate early retirement. But behind the highlight reels lies a grimly familiar theatre: whispers of a gargantuan ego and a kid convinced the world owes him a throne before he's even old enough to drive.

Enter Alejandro Garnacho. Never a man to let a piece of self-involved drama pass him by, the former United starlet waded directly into the fray.

Taking to TikTok - the modern footballer's equivalent of a press conference - Garnacho reposted a video appearing to defend the wantaway United youngster.

It featured screenshots of the reports surrounding Gabriel's exit, adorned with the caption: "JJ Gabriel wanting to leave Man Utd after being called one of the greatest talents itw [in the world]... and he's rumoured to join other big clubs... where have we seen this before?" This was, of course, followed by a montage of some of Garnacho's goals in red.

It was a fascinating, if entirely oblivious, piece of digital solidarity. It's just a re-post, but Garnacho is clearly drawing parallels between himself and Gabriel. Both highly-rated Carrington graduates. Both apparently misunderstood by the rigid, joyless adults in the room. Both destined for bigger and better things, apparently.

But if the Argentinian genuinely sees himself in JJ Gabriel, then Manchester United shouldn't just open the door for the 15-year-old, they should order him an Uber, pack his sandwiches, and wave him off with a big smile.

Let's answer Garnacho's rhetorical question. Where have we seen this before? We saw it last year, when his relationship with Ruben Amorim deteriorated over disciplinary concerns and a failure to meet the manager's tactical demands. Garnacho did little to repair the damage, and United eventually sold him to Chelsea for well below his market value at the time.

And how has that grand pursuit of greener pastures worked out? Not especially well. Garnacho arrived at Chelsea with plenty to prove but made next to no impact - wandering through matches with the gloomy detachment of a teenager dragged along to a garden party. For all the talk of his enormous self-belief, there was precious little evidence of it, with Garnacho producing nothing but a series of low-wattage, utterly forgettable cameos.

Twelve months after taking him off United's hands for a cut-price fee, Chelsea threw up their hands and offloaded the winger at the first whiff of buyer's remorse. Now parked on loan at Aston Villa, Garnacho is discovering that changing his postcode has done little to change his fortunes. The same sense of inertia that dogged him at Old Trafford and at Stamford Bridge has simply packed its bags and followed him up the M6.

On Wednesday night, Garnacho was once again an unused substitute as Villa faced Coventry in the League Cup. He sat on the bench, presumably pondering his own greatness, while a team of, let's be honest, Championship players ran around in front of him - an image that sums it up perfectly.

If Gabriel is cut from the same cloth as Garnacho - disruptive, arrogant and entitled - then United aren't suffering a tragedy so much as dodging a bullet. Talent can only take you so far. Being a technical wizard with a stratospheric ceiling is one thing; having the application, humility and hunger to learn is quite another. Plenty of prodigies have dazzled at 15 only to discover that potential means very little if the attitude doesn't match it.

By kicking up such an entitled fuss before he's even legally allowed to buy a Red Bull, Gabriel is teetering dangerously close to the Ravel Morrison precipice. Morrison was another United prodigy blessed with extraordinary ability, only for off-field chaos and a troublesome entourage to help smother his potential. He became a tragic monument to one of the most frustrating questions in football: just how good could he have been?

Gabriel urgently needs a dose of reality. He needs to shut out the noise, pull up his socks, and concentrate on playing football. That means dropping the off-field posturing and forgetting about which European giant might offer him and his father the most lucrative signing-on fee.

Manchester United clearly rate him. The pathway to the first team is right there in front of him. If Gabriel really is as special as those around him insist, his football will do the talking soon enough. Keep working, keep learning and, before long, he could be knocking on the door of the senior squad.

But kicking up a storm like this at 15 is a grim omen. Whether this attitude is coming from the boy himself or the people whispering in his ear, it's a glaring red flag, one that raises questions about whether his temperament will match his jaw-dropping talent.

Having your bridge-burning rebellion rubber-stamped by Alejandro Garnacho - one of the most exhaustingly self-involved figures in United's recent history - is not a flex, nor a seal of quality. It's a high-decibel warning siren. When a walking cautionary tale becomes your spiritual cheerleader, you haven't arrived - you've lost the plot.

United shouldn't spend another second wringing their hands over Gabriel's grand exit. They should simply open the door, wave him off, and quietly count their blessings. Because if this is how the story starts, perhaps the best thing United can do is make sure they aren't around for the ending.

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