Patrick Dorgu, Manchester United wingback, described a sense of “shock” inside the squad when it became known that Rasmus H\u00f8jlund would be leaving for Napoli this summer.<\/p>\n
The departure remained a talking point despite heavy incoming signings. Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha arrived from Brentford and Wolverhampton Wanderers for a combined \u00a3133.5 million. H\u00f8jlund had publicly insisted at the end of July: “My plan is very clear, that is for me to stay and fight for my spot, whatever happens,” and added, “Competition is fine with me. It sharpens me. I\u2019m more than ready.” <\/p>\n
Those statements did not produce the opportunity he expected. According to Dorgu, manager Ruben Amorim did not hand the 22-year-old a route back into matchday squads and H\u00f8jlund was dropped. The club then moved for Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko, paying an initial \u00a366.3 million in August, a development Dorgu says the player accepted reluctantly.<\/p>\n
Dorgu had already seen another Danish teammate, Christian Eriksen, leave when his contract expired in June. Even so, the exit of H\u00f8jlund surprised those close to him. “That\u2019s how it is in football,” Dorgu told assembled media ahead of Denmark\u2019s World Cup qualifier with Scotland on Friday. “You never know when it\u2019s your turn to move on. We knew it would happen to Christian, but it was perhaps a bigger shock that Rasmus had to move on. I talked to him a lot during the process and could sense which way it was going. Hopefully, we will now see each other every time on the national team.”<\/p>\n
Dorgu\u2019s account underlines how transfer activity and squad selection combined this summer to reshuffle options at Manchester United and to prompt an unexpected exit for a young forward who had publicly vowed to stay and compete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dorgu: United in ‘shock’ after H\u00f8jlund’s move to Napoli. He expects regular meetings on Denmark duty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[317,260,932],"class_list":["post-2538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-benjamin-sesko","tag-bryan-mbeumo","tag-rasmus-hojlund-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}