Recent Manchester United signing Memphis Depay has a bad attitude and is inconsistent according to contemporaries, reports the Sunday Mirror.
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This is despite the 21-year-old scoring 25 goals and assisting another five in 37 appearances for PSV Eindhoven last season, firing them to the Eredivisie title. This earned him a £25 million move to Old Trafford, and the winger is now expected to perform the same way in the Premier League and the Champions League for the Red Devils.
However, Louis van Gaal may be stuck with a dud if the word of two who should know is anything to go by. Southampton boss Ronald Koeman – who worked with Depay while he was PSV manager – believes that United overpaid for the Netherlands international and he could struggle to adapt to the top flight.
He even has a bad attitude! The Dutchman said: “I think they paid a lot of money. Because it is United, where they already spent £200m on players like Angel Di Maria, such a big figure is put in perspective.
“If you pay millions for Di Maria who hardly plays, if you pay a fortune in wages and rent fee for [on-loan] Radamel Falcao who never plays, than £25m is not a lot of money for them. He won’t play every game. I have learnt, while I am here in England, that Dutch players can’t make the jump to the top of the Premier League easily. And young players can’t play 38 games anyway.
“And I see another lack of quality with the Dutch kids, that I have also noticed with other young stars in the Premier League: they don’t communicate! They behave like individuals. Stuck to their smartphones.”
Meanwhile, influential scout Henk Gim also agreed on the player’s poor attitude, even berating him for poor language on the pitch.
He said: “I watched the young Memphis Depay often enough. I was doing scouting work on him when he was playing in the Under-16 side for PSV Eindhoven, and there was this game against FC Twente. I always work with a list of five specific qualities: skills, tactics, physique, attitude, personality. I did not get any higher with my average ratings than 5.6 out of 10.
“And you know what brought the rating down most of all? The rating for his personality. It is only because of the fact that I could not go any lower than zero out of 10, otherwise I would have rated him well below that. It was absolutely disgusting, the foul language that boy used towards his fellow players and towards people in the crowd.
“I understand a boy can be in a period of having to grow up. With the intensive personal coaching at PSV Eindhoven they have managed to make an okay player of him.”
However, it isn’t all bad for United, with Koeman both admitting that he tried to sign the player himself and that van Gaal could be the perfect man to get the best out of Depay.
He said: “My brother Erwin has the same agent, we tried to bring him to Southampton but he wanted to stay for one more year at PSV. When United went in for him this summer, we knew at Saints that we had no chance. When they come, we have no chance.
“I think, with Louis van Gaal, he gets a coach who he knows . It makes it easier to settle.”