Manchester United academy prodigy JJ Gabriel, 15, has asked to leave the club ahead of his 16th birthday next month, according to Daily Mail chief sports writer Oliver Holt. Gabriel is regarded as the most feted young talent to come through Old Trafford's academy since Ryan Giggs, one of United's most decorated homegrown players and a member of the famous "Class of '92" generation that broke into the first team under Sir Alex Ferguson.
News of Gabriel's request broke on Tuesday afternoon and was met with dismay and horror inside the club, Holt reported.
Holt argued that United, not Gabriel or his family, are to blame for the breakdown. "Why would his family entrust the future of English football's hottest youth property to the greedy Glazers and Sir Jim Ratcliffe?" he wrote, describing the situation as another symptom of the club's decline. "It is not surprising that the lad is looking for a way out," Holt added. "It would be more surprising if he wasn't."
The Glazer family have owned a majority stake in United since 2005, while Ratcliffe's INEOS group bought a minority stake in 2024 and took charge of football operations at the club.
Missed transfer targets
Holt linked Gabriel's situation to a wider pattern of United losing out on top targets. This summer, the club's reported priorities for strengthening midfield were Elliot Anderson, Mateus Fernandes, Sandro Tonali, Bruno Guimaraes and Adam Wharton. None of them signed.
Fernandes and Tonali joined Tottenham Hotspur, Guimaraes signed for Arsenal, Anderson moved to Manchester City and Wharton stayed at Crystal Palace. United instead brought in Carlos Baleba, Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans, players Holt described as good but "not good enough to close the gap" to the clubs already ahead of them.
United finished last season in the Premier League's top four under manager Michael Carrick and assistant Steve Holland, but Holt said their recruitment let them down over the summer and the team has made a poor start to the new season.
A club at war with its own fans
Holt wrote that United remain "a mess of dysfunction" and criticised plans to rebuild the squad department by department, starting with the defence next summer, calling the approach "deeply flawed." He said the dynamics of a football squad do not work that way, adding that it feels, once again, "as if United are going backwards."
The club has also clashed with sections of its own support after removing hundreds of season tickets in a crackdown it says targets touts. Holt said the move has created "a poisonous atmosphere" at Old Trafford at a time when Carrick "least needs it." He questioned suggestions that greed was driving those around Gabriel: "United and their current clutch of misbegotten owners wrote the book on it," he wrote. "If there is any moral high ground in an episode like this, United will find it very hard to scramble up to it."
Watching Gabriel's rise
Holt said he saw Gabriel play for United against Oxford United in the FA Youth Cup, English football's leading youth knockout competition, at the Kassam Stadium last February, and immediately recognised "a special talent," electric with the ball at his feet and with "an instinctive awareness of space and how to find it and vision that went beyond his years."
Carrick had reportedly been planning to include Gabriel in United's squad for Wednesday evening's Carabao Cup tie against Brighton & Hove Albion. Holt suggested the club may already have missed a trick by not promoting him to the first team sooner. "It may be that, even at 15, Gabriel felt he was being held back," he wrote.
How Arsenal handled their own prodigies
Holt contrasted United's caution with Arsenal, who handed first-team debuts to academy prospects Max Dowman and Ethan Nwaneri at the age of 15. Dowman scored in the Premier League last season and was used by manager Mikel Arteta during the title run-in.
What comes next
United are said to remain hopeful of repairing the relationship and keeping Gabriel at the club, though Holt said it already feels as if it will be hard to come back from "a fracture of such a public nature."
He closed by contrasting the club's current state with its history of developing homegrown players, from the Busby Babes of the 1950s to the Class of '92, eras he said belong to a Manchester United that "disappeared long, long ago."
