Aaron Wan-Bissaka was a young man rated among the country’s most promising footballers when Manchester United came calling in the summer of 2019.
He was described, on his arrival from Crystal Palace, by manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær as “one of the best upcoming defenders in the Premier League”, at a time when England could claim to have half of the top-10 right-backs in Europe.
He was, at an initial £45 million, the fifth-most expensive player United had ever signed and remains now the priciest ever uncapped Englishman.
But really, he was by his own admission still a 21-year-old boy, not yet 18 months on from his senior debut and about to swap the communal security of a tight south London club for the lonely spotlight of perhaps the world’s most scrutinised.
“It was difficult,” Wan-Bissaka says. “Very difficult. I went [to Manchester] on my own and it was my first time moving away from home. I had no one up there, apart from my PlayStation.”
It was quieter than London - “and I like quiet,” he says - but in its own way more overbearing, too, for the lack of anonymity and escape.
“Because Manchester’s smaller, everyone’s aware of everything that’s happening,” he says. “You have to be mentally strong to avoid the negative stuff it comes with.”
Early in his time at United, he felt so isolated that he would travel back to London after training most afternoons, to spend a few hours with friends and family, before returning to Manchester the same night and restarting the cycle the following day.
Speaking to Standard Sport now, though, in his first newspaper interview since leaving United for West Ham this summer, the defender’s assessment of his five years in Manchester is broadly upbeat. So, what changed?
“It got tiring!” he says. “It wasn’t the right idea for me to be doing that. I had to try and settle up there, and I ended up doing that.”
He recalls, with some residual giddiness, the nerves at walking into a dressing room containing the likes of Paul Pogba and David de Gea for the first time, and says it took most of his first season for the reality to set in that he, like them, was a United player.
Early in his second, he became a father for the first time, a major reason for the difference between the character that left London five years ago and the one that which exists now.
“I came back as a man,” he says. “More mature, more grounded, more focused.”
I wonder, then, whether he looks back on the move north as one that, after fewer than 50 senior appearances for Palace, came too soon?
“I’ve thought about that,” he says. “It could have gone any way. I could have told myself it was too early but the other side of me was asking, ‘Is this opportunity going to come again?’
“So, I thought, let me just take it. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. At least I’d have tried and given it my all. That was my mentality.”
Goodbye to Manchester
Given how many careers nosedived at Old Trafford across the same period, a spell made up of peaks and troughs probably represents an above- average return.
Wan-Bissaka struggled to break into Erik ten Hag’s plans in the first part of the Dutchman’s reign, ahead of the midseason break for the 2022 World Cup, and has admitted since that he feared at that point his time might be up.
Instead, there was a resurgence and he finished last season on a major high, starting the final 10 league matches of the season and excelling in the shock FA Cup final victory over Manchester City.
“The experience of lifting [the cup], going through all of it in that moment, it’s something I’d like to get used to,” he says. “I just didn’t want that day to end.”
Why, then, did he feel ready to move on this summer? A pause suggests he was not immediately sure he was.
“I spoke to the club and they thought this opportunity was best for me,” he explains. “They gave me some time to think about it. In the moment, I didn’t, but I spoke to family and friends about it and we all decided it was the right time.”
The full-back would have been entering the final year of his contract, with uncertainty over a renewal, and the £15 million fee and seven-year contract proposed by West Ham was seen as a good deal for all parties.
United, at that point, wanted to get the signings of Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui over the line and Wan-Bissaka was appreciative of their honesty about his likely role.
“It could have gone another way,” he says. “They said it in a way which kind of opened my eyes to see what was actually best for me.”
The East London reboot
Before securing the transfer, Wan-Bissaka spent part of the summer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he has set up an academy.
Though he once played for their U17 side (as a forward in an 8-0 defeat to England at St George’s Park), he had never previously been to the country where both of his parents were born.
“It was great,” he says. “I want to go again. It really opened my eyes, to see the differences in how they live and how we do here, in how the country’s run. Our aim is to build classrooms, pitches, just to give people an opportunity to train and learn in nice facilities. Give them the opportunity that we have here. And I have a lot of family there that I met for the first time.”
The London branch of his family were delighted to learn this summer that their boy was coming home, but not without reservations.
“You know how London is,” Wan-Bissaka explains, a little sheepishly. “There are a lot of distractions. It was happening at the start of my Palace career. Just not taking care of my body right, the food I ate and what I did with my spare time.”
It is amusing to hear a man who once took daily shuttles between Manchester and the capital explain why moving back to south London was not an option: the commute to West Ham’s training ground at Rush Green would have been “too far”.
Instead, he has settled in Canary Wharf, or rather seems to still be settling, given he has to double-check whether that counts as east London, and is therefore true West Ham territory.
Ready to attack?
Hammers boss Julen Lopetegui had been interested in signing Wan-Bissaka 12 months earlier, when in charge of Wolves, but an initial conversation between the pair never went any further.
When the Spaniard replaced David Moyes this summer, however, the link was already in place.
“He was telling me that he wanted me to come, explaining his project, and it did persuade me,” Wan-Bissaka says. “I was happy with the direction the club was going and the plans he had. It made sense for me to be a part of that.”
Collectively, the Lopetegui era is off to a rocky start, with the weekend’s 3-0 loss at Nottingham Forest making it five defeats, and only three victories, from 10 league matches.
The former Real Madrid coach’s pitch to Wan-Bissaka, though, was as much about individual development and, in particular, his plan to “encourage me and push me to express myself more in the final third”.
Wan-Bissaka’s reputation is as one of division’s top one-v-one full-backs, his skills famously honed across hours of direct battle with Wilfried Zaha in training at Palace.
West Ham supporters have questioned his more adventurous brief this season, fuming at the sight of their team being countered upon while their best covering defender is, by design, stranded high up field.
Wan-Bissaka has always felt the attacking side of his game has been underrated, but insists that is not a source of annoyance. “I thrive off doubters,” he says. “That pushes me more.”
And he is happy, too, to revel in a degree of notoriety among the league’s wingers, with Jack Grealish the latest to come up with Wan-Bissaka’s name when asked the obligatory toughest-opponent quickfire-question in a recent for-socials interview.
“They say it to me as well,” he smiles. “To see it doesn’t go unnoticed is a good feeling, to get that praise.”
With the trickle-down trend of inverted full-backs, Wan-Bissaka accepts that his position, perhaps more than any outfield role on the pitch, is evolving. Still only 26, though, he insists he is, too.
“Hearing other ages, players born in 2005, I can’t get my head around it,” he laughs. “But life just keeps going, so we all have to grow up.”
