Erik ten Hag’s first season as Manchester United boss has been all about changing the narrative.
When the Dutchman was hired, he arrived in the aftermath of Ralf Rangnick’s disastrous tenure, which ended in the Austrian suggesting it could take six years to catch the Premier League's elite. Less than a year later, United are in a fully-fledged title race and still competing on multiple fronts, with four pieces of silverware still up for grabs.
Ten Hag has also helped change the narrative around several of his previously underperforming stars. Marcus Rashford has gone from unfulfilled potential to one of the world’s best, Fred from maligned to appreciated - even Cristiano Ronaldo has gone from Premier League to Saudi Pro League, his exit seemingly lifting a weight from the dressing room.
But when the Red Devils line up at Wembley to face Newcastle in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final, it could help cap an even bigger transformation, the career of Luke Shaw. At just 27, Shaw has already scaled the heights and plummeted the very depths available to a professional football player.
Signed as the world’s most expensive teenager back in 2014 in a £30million move from Southampton, Shaw was well on his way to becoming a mainstay under Louis van Gaal. However, that promising career was almost stopped indefinitely after an injury which is so graphic, YouTube makes viewers confirm their age before replaying it.
The incident came in September 2015 during a Champions League clash with PSV in Eindhoven. The left-back had made a run into the penalty area, before he was scythed down by Hector Moreno. Shaw immediately knew how bad the injury was when teammates turned away so as not to see it.
It was later confirmed he had suffered a double leg fracture so severe, had his rehab plans been tweaked even slightly, his career would have come to an immediate end.
"I nearly lost my leg. I was really close to actually losing my leg. I never knew that until six months later when the doctor told me,” he explained. "At the time, they were thinking about flying me back [from Holland] and if I'd have flown back, I would probably have lost my leg because of the blood clots and stuff in the leg.”
Six years on, there is a tendency to forget just how much Shaw went through. It was 11 months and four operations before Shaw returned to the pitch, with his scars a lasting memory of his ordeal.
"I've got – I don't want to talk about it too much – two scars down the side of my leg where they had to cut it open and pull them out because of how severe it was."
“I partly blame myself,” he said when recalling his injury in an interview with the Guardian in 2016. “I’d run into their penalty area and I should have shot with my right foot but I wanted to come inside. I wanted to be on my left foot. And then, obviously, the tackle. I don’t even want to think about the tackle, to be honest.
“At the time I thought: ‘Give him the benefit of the doubt, it wasn’t actually a bad tackle.’ But the more I’ve seen it since, the more I think: ‘You know, that was actually a really bad challenge.’
“I remember I said I didn’t know if I was going to play again. I didn’t properly think that, but it did go through my head a couple of times at the start,” Shaw admitted.
Shaw would be sidelined for 11 months before he returned, at Wembley, to help United win the Community Shield. In that time, he had missed the Red Devils lifting the FA Cup - an unwanted theme which would become a recurring one for the player.
And though that game marked the end of his battle with the horrific one, it merely signalled the start of his tussle with the ‘Special One’. Jose Mourinho was appointed as manager as Shaw completed his rehab in the summer of 2016.
Mourinho quickly built a team of his ‘favourites’ and Shaw was on the outside looking in. "He has to change his football brain. We need his fantastic physical and technical qualities, but he cannot continue to play with my brain,” the Portuguese boss said after an infamous flare-up during a clash with Everton.
“He has to grow up, he has to mature, he has to understand the game better, he has to be more focused. He has a lot to learn and a lot to improve,” Mourinho added.
During his time in the Old Trafford dugout, Mourinho used Shaw sporadically - and when it came to the biggest clashes, not at all. Both in the League Cup triumph AND Europa League victory, the defender was little more than an interested spectator.
"It was a mixed relationship," Shaw diplomatically stated after Mourinho’s sacking. "A lot of the things that happened between us two, sometimes he went about it in the right way. I think a lot of people will agree with that at the club.
"Our relationship wasn't the best. It was probably quite easy to see that from the outside. But one thing Jose did was make me mentally much stronger.”
On Mourinho’s part, he suggested that he managed a player still trying to overcome the physical and mental scars from that night in the Netherlands.
"I found a boy after an incredible injury that put his career at risk. A boy with some fears and scars from that awful night,” he told talkSPORT in 2021.
Shaw was then treated to the polar opposite in terms of man-management from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Revitalised, he rediscovered some of his best form and became a mainstay in the side. But his wait for a major final victory went on.
He started against Villarreal in the Europa League final of 2021, scoring his penalty in United’s marathon shootout defeat in Gdansk. Shaw had no time to mope though and would play a pivotal role as England reached their first major final in 55 years at the rearranged European Championship.
And there’s a version of that final where Shaw’s early goal goes down in the annals of English football history, standing proudly alongside Geoff Hurst’s fourth in 1966.
Instead…more heartbreak, this time Italy condemning him and the Three Lions to defeat on home soil after a penalty shootout.
Like many of his Three Lions teammates, there was a slump after that tournament. But while Harry Maguire is still searching for his old self, Shaw has completed another comeback, with Ten Hag happy to play him across the back four, including in central defence.
"He's not only a team player, he's a leader. He showed a lot of leader capacity,” the United boss explained.
“He's the example in this moment and his skills, with his physical power, he brings a lot to the team. Now also in his mentality, he's an example of how to win big games.”
Against Newcastle, he has the opportunity to live up to Ten Hag’s promise and finally win when a trophy is at stake. And as he warms up on the Wembley turf, his United colleagues need only look at the scar coming out of his lowered sock to know what Shaw is made of.
A trophy lift would be just rewards for a player who has consistently and stubbornly refused to be written off.
