Why a permanent Chelsea move for Sancho is no longer certain

When Jadon Sancho's loan move to Chelsea from Manchester United was confirmed on 31 August, it seemed a perfect deal for all parties.

United were keen to publicise that the loan included an 'obligation' for Chelsea to sign Sancho permanently - providing they finished at least 14th in the Premier League this season.

The added facts that there was no loan fee paid and Chelsea were only covering half of Sancho's wages - something minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe revealed in his interview with BBC Sport on 10 March - underlined United's desire to sever ties with the England winger.

Sancho was a £73m signing from Borussia Dortmund just over three years earlier, but his social media post "wishing everyone all the best in the future" did not suggest he was thinking of returning to Old Trafford.

Chelsea was the club he supported as a boy. To Kennington-born Sancho, who joined Watford as a kid, moved to Manchester City at 14 and then onto Germany, where he became a senior player and an England international, Chelsea was the equivalent of returning "home".

For Blues boss Enzo Maresca, he was another valuable attacking option in a reshaped squad being fine tuned to attack four competitions.

As has happened before in Sancho's career, there were exciting early impressions. But now the talk is of a £5m compensation sum Chelsea would have to pay to send him back - and if they will choose to pay it.

Once more, Sancho - who turns 25 on Tuesday - is heading into the summer facing an uncertain future. Why has it happened, again?

Firstly, the word out of Chelsea is that it is still their intention to keep Sancho. That is also what United think.

Yet, if that eventuality was so certain, why has the information about the £5m 'return clause' made it into the public domain?

It is not that hard to work out why, at the very least, Chelsea must be tempted to trigger it.

Sancho's initial performances were impressive. He created a late winner on his Premier League debut at Bournemouth on 14 September, then claimed assists in his next two games.

Scoring in successive victories against Southampton and Tottenham in December, Sancho had five goal involvements in nine league games as Chelsea moved into second spot, four points behind leaders Liverpool.

"In training recently I've been working on my shooting a bit more, on hitting the far corner," said Sancho in the aftermath of his strike at Tottenham, when he did exactly that to spark a victorious comeback. "The staff and players have been telling me to be a bit more selfish in front of goal. I know I have a lot of people to prove wrong and I'm working hard every day in training."

Since then, in 18 games in all competitions, Sancho has not scored and managed just a single assist, setting up Cole Palmer in the 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace on 4 January. In those 18 games, he has had 13 shots, two of which were on target.

The 24-year-old was reflective of his situation when asked about it after the victory over Leicester on 9 March.

"I know I can do better especially in front of goal," he said. "It is kind of annoying not to score but it will come."

Insiders stress Sancho's attitude behind the scenes has been good. They say he has done extra training sessions to become more robust and feels it is unfair to analyse his efforts purely on the basis of goals and assists because more work is now being done off the ball.

But since that Tottenham game, Chelsea have accumulated just 18 points in 14 league games. The situation would look far worse were it not for home victories over struggling duo Southampton and Leicester in a 10-day period from 25 February. What appeared to be a title push is now a battle to claim a Champions League spot. Chelsea have also been eliminated from the FA Cup.

Little wonder, therefore, that thoughts are turning to how Maresca's squad can be improved.

BBC Sport has previously reported Chelsea wanted to sign a striker and winger, and looked at multiple right-footed left wingers in January, including Manchester United's Alejandro Garnacho and Borussia Dortmund's Jamie Gittens.

Both are younger and regarded as more direct and faster options. Chelsea have struggled since main striker Nicolas Jackson suffered a hamstring injury against West Ham on 3 February. Sancho has completed 90 minutes just once in eight games since then.

If Chelsea eventually decide Sancho is not for them, it would give United a tricky problem to solve.

In one sense, he would be starting with a clean slate. Sancho's issues at Old Trafford were with Erik ten Hag.

He refused to buckle and offer the Dutchman the apology after accusing his boss of scapegoating him with damning criticism over his performances in training. The Dutchman cited it as the reason Sancho was not involved in the Premier League game at Arsenal on 3 September 2023.

It was the second time Ten Hag had clashed with Sancho over his performances. In October 2022, he sent Sancho on a personal training programme for three months after detecting a dip in performance he felt was a legacy of the player being left out of an England squad the previous month.

"If you're from the streets, no one wants to apologise," former United forwards' coach Benni McCarthy told a South African radio station last May.

"By doing that, you admit you are not training well, you are lazy, everything you are accused of. Jadon wasn't going to have that. The manager has a strong character and just said all he wants is an apology. Jadon thought he had done nothing wrong.

"He didn't see why he had to apologise. Sometimes you have to apologise, because a player will never win against a manager. I spoke to Jadon as a coach, as a mentor, as a friend, and as someone who grew up on the streets and knows the code. But Jadon just wasn't seeing it."

Sancho has never had a training session under Ten Hag's replacement Ruben Amorim.

Yet even without Sancho, Amorim inherited a squad with too many wide attacking players. The former Sporting boss was neutral when he made his only public utterances on the player last month.

"I'm just focused on my players and my problems," he said. "Sancho is not my problem. We need to win games and then we will see next season."

Amorim had been asked about him because Sancho had responded to Marcus Rashford's loan move to Aston Villa by commenting "freedom" on one of the striker's Instagram posts, in relation to his former team-mate's own issues at Old Trafford.

It was not a response likely to trigger a sympathetic reaction from club insiders.

The really important people at United do not seem to view Sancho in a positive light anyway given, in addition to his comments on salary, Ratcliffe also told BBC Sport "we are paying £17m to buy him in the summer", which relates to the fee still outstanding to Borussia Dortmund from the initial transfer in 2021.

Given his contract expires at the end of next season, United know a Sancho return either needs an immediate summer sale or they must make a huge decision over whether to trigger the additional year on a contract that currently runs to 2026, when he could leave for nothing as a free agent.

"Overpaid and not good enough," was Ratcliffe's sweeping generalisation of a number of United players earlier this month. Few would dispute that.

The difficulty is getting rid of them without incurring even more financial pain.

United thought Sancho's move to Chelsea had done that. They may have been mistaken.