Manchester United should have kept four young players that I coached instead of letting them go

Former Manchester United coach Quinton Fortune believes the club made a mistake by letting four young talents leave Old Trafford.

Fortune, who played for the Red Devils from 1999 to 2006 and won the Premier League title under Sir Alex Ferguson, briefly returned as Under 23s assistant coach in 2019 before moving to Reading. During his time back at United, he worked with academy players James Garner, Angel Gomes, Teden Mengi and Anthony Elanga. They would all leave without making a significant impact at the top level.

However, Mengi is now playing regularly for Luton, Garner for Everton and Elanga for Nottingham Forest, while Gomes has been impressing in France with Lille. With Erik ten Hag's team currently struggling to become true title contenders and lacking squad depth, Fortune suggests that letting these players go may have been a missed opportunity.

RATINGS: How the United players rated in Forest win

RATINGS: How the United players rated in Forest win

Fortune told Metro: "I was very fortunate to work with Teden Mengi, Jimmy (Garner) and Anthony Elanga. Andreas Pereira as well, who got into the first team after joining as a kid. I would love to have them all now. In hindsight you look back and think all of these kids are doing so great and they should be with us!

"But I'm happy for them because they're doing what they love. Their goal was obviously to play in the Premier League, and they're playing. I don't know if that would have been the situation at Manchester United if they had stayed. That's the difficult part for those kids, and I have to take my hat off to them because Teden and Jimmy were at Manchester United since they were babies. So for them to leave it was a big decision, to leave the nest.

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