The protracted crisis between Jadon Sancho and Manchester United manager, Erik ten Hag, escalated further on Tuesday as the player deleted his Instagram account.
Sancho deactivated his Instagram, where he had 10 million followers, after being removed from the first-team squad at Manchester United by manager Ten Hag following a messy disagreement, which is threatening to spiral out of control.
After being dropped from the squad to face Arsenal on September 3 for a poor level in training, Sancho accused his manager of spreading “completely untrue” information and of making him a “scapegoat”.
The Mirror reports that even though Sancho later deleted the post, he refused to apologise to Ten Hag for his behaviour. He has since been barred from using all first-team facilities at United’s training base at Carrington, including the team dining room.
Sancho’s team-mates, including Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw and Marcus Rashford, have tried to encourage him to apologise and work his way back into the squad, while the Professional Footballers’ Association have offered to mediate. But it now seems that Sancho was retreating further into his shell ahead of a potential transfer away from United in the January transfer window.
United supporters noticed on Tuesday morning that Sancho had deactivated his Instagram account, leaving his 10 million followers in the dark.
At the time of this report, his account on X (formerly known as Twitter), where he has 2.2m followers, remains active, but he has not posted since August 6, 2023 having deleted his post following the Arsenal game.
Asked about Sancho on Friday, ahead of the Premier League game against Burnley, Ten Hag said: “It depends on him. For the rest, we are preparing for Burnley, and that has all our focus. He will not be in the squad.”
The last public statement from the club on Sancho simply read: “Jadon Sancho will remain on a personal training programme away from the first-team group, pending resolution of a squad discipline issue.”