{"id":23264,"date":"2026-08-12T07:45:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T07:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=23264"},"modified":"2026-08-12T07:45:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T07:45:34","slug":"unleash-jj-gabriel-the-five-man-utd-academy-stars-who-can-step-up-to-fill-recruitment-gaps-for-michael-carrick-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=23264","title":{"rendered":"Unleash JJ Gabriel! The five Man Utd academy stars who can step up to fill recruitment gaps for Michael Carrick this season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div aria-label=\"main body\">\n<div>\n<p><span>Devaney may not be used to playing in the heart of the backline, but Dan Armer certainly is. The Scottish ace is a savvy, ball-playing defender, as supporters saw in his substitute appearances featured against Wrexham, Rosenborg and Atletico.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The sight of Armer driving out of the defence instantly brings Harry Maguire to mind, and he has made a big impression on the veteran United and England star. &#8220;I think Dan&#8217;s been brilliant,&#8221; Maguire said via <\/span><span>United&#8217;s official media channels<\/span><span> this week. &#8220;Eighteen years old, playing in tough games and playing for this club for the first time. He&#8217;s been magnificent at centre-back and, hopefully, he can continue to progress, keep enjoying working with us.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Armer may well have the clearest path to a starting spot under Carrick. With Matthijs de Ligt still out due to a chronic back injury and Lisandro Martinez nursing a knock after his World Cup exploits for Argentina, United only have Maguire, Leny Yoro and the 19-year-old Ayden Heaven to call upon at centre-half.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It would make perfect sense, then, to throw Armer into the mix. Standing at the imposing height of 6ft 4in, and boasting the tactical awareness of a much older player, he should have no issue adjusting to the competitive senior level. Like all the other players on this list, he&#8217;s hungry, too. Carrick has nothing to lose by giving them <\/span><i><em>all<\/em><\/i><span> a platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Devaney may not be used to playing in the heart of the backline, but Dan&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}