Luke Shaw returned to Manchester United training facing familiar transfer question

Eight years to the day since signing for Manchester United, Luke Shaw drove back into Carrington wondering what the season ahead might hold for him.

Shaw has been a great survivor at Old Trafford but even as he approaches a decade of service there are questions still to be answered. He is only 26 but he is really United's long-term answer at left-back? A fourth manager (five, if you include Ralf Rangnick) is about to try and make that judgement.

The England international is unlikely to face any competition from Alex Telles, who has failed to make an impression at the club, but United are still being linked with Feyenoord's attacking left-back Tyrell Malacia and the 22-year-old could be a good fit for Erik ten Hag's system.

READ MORE: United players return for pre-season training

The new United manager will certainly know what he's getting in Malacia, who he will have come up against in the Eredivisie, but Shaw has a chance to establish his own credentials having returned to Carrington for pre-season training on Monday morning.

This will be his ninth season at the club, but somehow he remains something of an unknown quantity. There have been spells in the wilderness, especially under Mourinho, and battles with injury and bad luck.

There have also been moments when he's looked like a world-class left-back, notably in 2020/21, a season which finished with a string of superb performances for England at the European Championship.

But that remains the only one of Shaw's eight seasons in which he's featured in more than 30 Premier League games and according to the Transfermarkt database he has now been unavailable for 150 games in his time at the club due to illness and injury.

Of course, 51 of those came in 2015/16 and