Many with ties to United have questioned why the Red Devils allowed McTominay to move on, given his versatility and home-grown status. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is among those to have been left baffled by a sale that made little sense.
The 1999 Treble winner handed McTominay 115 appearances during his reign as United manager and has told the Stick to Football podcast of why he would never have given the green light to a departure: “I was almost shocked because you need or want a core of the local lads, ones who get the club. Scott did.
“For me, I think he’s shown in Italy how good of a player he is. His character, personality around the place, he sets the standards and he’d survive when we played 100 per cent. He was voted Serie A Player of the Year last year and won the league with Napoli so he’s one of them that you only know when you’ve got him, how good he is and how important he can be.
“In my squad, Scotty probably wasn’t allowed to play in his best position enough, yeah [because of] Bruno [Fernandes] and maybe the lack of physicality that we had. You saw a couple of games against Leeds, we said: ‘Scott, this is a man-to-man game, we want you running through as a third man,’ and he scored, two or three, I can’t remember how many goals he scored against Leeds. That’s probably a reason because we think of him as… he’s one of the eights. Great physicality.”
While Solskjaer remains a big fan of McTominay, ex-United captain Roy Keane is not convinced that the Red Devils need to go back over old ground. He said: “I’m always wary when lads leave, for a club like Napoli now but it’s a different challenge to Man United and he’s done well.
“Good luck to the lad but I still wasn’t hanging my hat on him every week going, ‘He will be the lad that will bring Man United back.’ When you’re classing him as a squad player and someone says, ‘Here’s £30m,' it’s not a bad deal.”