Paul McGrath: The player Manchester United should sign this summer

Nobody liked 90 minutes playing against the red wave that would come at teams relentlessly.

Now Manchester United too often turn in milk-and-water displays, such as that at Brighton at the AMEX on Thursday night – where there was no fire evident, no drive, no passion.

Instead of showing those qualities, United’s players were like those of a mid-table team whose minds were already ‘on the beach’ at this point of the season.

Remember, this is a club that still needs two wins to nail down a Champions League place for next season.

Ok, they lost the match in a daft way, but no one could argue against the idea Brighton were the better team on the night.

What was Luke Shaw thinking of? This is a footballer who has played in European finals for club and country. Shaw was not a teenage debutant, panicking in the last seconds of a game.

The notion that you can go around swinging your arms in the air with 17 TV cameras and VAR at every match is just daft.

That said, the late spot-kick should not deflect from what Brighton are doing.

Fair dues to the Seagulls. They play good football and Roberto De Zerbi has picked up where Graham Potter left off, buying good players and improving them. Now Brighton can see Europa League football on the horizon for the 2023-24 campaign.

Next season will be very different for Manchester United.

The first task for manager Erik ten Hag over the next two months or so is to sell off anyone he does not rate as United players for the future – he needs players who will help the club win a Premier League or a Champions League.

Whoever the owners are in a few weeks’ time, it matters little. This will not be an easy job.

As it was in my time, United are good payers – and if you have two years left on a contract there, lads won’t move somewhere else.

Why would they go elsewhere and play for, say, two-thirds of the wages they are now getting at Old Trafford? That wouldn’t make financial sense.

Harry Maguire may be an exception to that. He knows his England place will not survive another season of being stuck in the United reserves.

But other players will not be so keen to depart. And this will be a big test of Ten Hag’s management skills. He has to move on players who are not up to the lofty tasks he has set for himself.

Then he has to get in, by my reckoning, a full-back, a centre-back, that Robbo/Keano midfield leader I wrote about a few weeks ago, and a centre-forward.

There is also the long-term call to make on goalkeeper David de Gea. He made some fine saves against Brighton, but, through no fault of his own, still didn’t keep a clean sheet.

Is Ten Hag going to be satisfied with the Spaniard in goal for the next five seasons? Or does he try to get his own, long-term, keeper in during the summer?

Today, United come face to face with one of the players who might come into the club soon, West Ham midfielder Declan Rice.

With Jude Bellingham bound for the Bernabeu, United will now be in a mad scramble with the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal to get their hands on Rice.

Can he be a future Manchester United leader in the mould of Bryan Robson or Roy Keane?

United can only find out the hard way, but I’ll say this: Rice, to me, is one of the handful of players I see around who might be up to the job.

Another player United will surely be interested in soon was playing for Brighton on Thursday in Alexis Mac Allister.

The more I see of the Argentine, the more I like him. Again, though, Liverpool, Arsenal and maybe even Manchester City will be in for him, too.

Ten Hag has a job on his hands to persuade these players that Old Trafford is the place for them to win trophies over the next five, prime, years of their careers.

West Ham are in that limbo position right now. They are probably safe from relegation but not quite mathematically so yet.

So they will be well fired up for this one, and Rice will surely be motivated to display his talents to a new employer. It could be another long 90 minutes for United.