Why Mata deserved his award

It's been an impressive start to the 2020/21 campaign for Juan, who was excellent in the two Carabao Cup games he started - away at Luton Town and Brighton & Hove Albion. He scored in both - including his 50th United goal - and he laid on a lovely assist for McTominay to open the scoring in last week's 3-0 victory over the Seagulls.

McTominay urged any budding young players to take a leaf out of Mata's book when it comes to honing their technical ability and he also gave an insight into the 32-year-old's qualities as a person away from the pitch.

"What a player," Scott told us. "He’s top isn’t he? You don’t have to say much more about Juan. On and off the pitch, he’s class. The way he dresses is class, the way he speaks to people is class… for every young footballer who is aspiring to be a top, top player, then just watch Juan Mata.

"He 100 per cent knows what it takes to win trophies. He’s a winner and he’s adopting that mentality for us and he has high, high levels of expectation for all the players around him to reach his standards. You can see that whenever he performs like he does."

One man who knows Mata extremely well is his fellow countryman De Gea. The pair have played alongside each other since their early youth days with Spain and the duo remain as close as ever to this day.

"Juan is great," declared David. "He is the same as he has always been, he has been playing from a young age so people forget he’s still young.

"He has a lot of quality and personality, also experience. It's very, very important to have experienced players in the team. For us, it’s great to have players like Juan with quality and the vision he has. He shows it every time he plays. 

"It's been great to see him score some goals already, I’m very happy for him and he is playing really well."

The new season is here. Our 2020/21 home, away and third kits are available now from United Direct.