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Wilfried Zaha Urged To Go Out On Loan

Zaha has not played a single minute of Premier League football this year. The scout that discovered Zaha urges him to go on loan to find regular football.

Laurence Griffiths

I think Zaha is a real talent, he has pace, he has foot feet and he has football intelligence. However unless he can force his way into the Man United team, a loan more is the only way for him to build upon his very slim chances of making the World Cup squad for Brazil.

Dave Webb, the scout who discovered Zaha as a 13 year old playing park football as urged the United winger to test the loan market to keep up his development:

"He is realistic and knows he is at a big club and has to compete and fight for his place. It's a lot different club to Crystal Palace. He has a good work ethic and will continue working hard in training.

"He's not getting any football, Wilf is a good character but he just likes to play, so a loan move to another Premier League club would suit him."

Zaha has appeared just once for United, playing 61 minutes in the 2013 FA community shield before being replaced by Antonio Valencia. The emergence of impressive youngster Adnan Januzaj has meant Zaha being pushed further down the pecking order. Zaha was left out of the Manchester United squad completely for the victory against Stoke at Old Trafford yesterday.

United manager David Moyes addressed the issue and confirmed that if he can't find a place for Zaha before January he will look to loan him out. Speaking to the Sun, Moyes was quoted as saying

"I've said if I couldn't get him a game I would look at it in January.

"I really thought when he came in he needed to be here for six months to see how we work.

"There is competition in the wide areas with Nani, Antonio Valencia, Ashley Young, Adnan Januzaj and even Shinji Kagawa - that makes it one of the areas where we are strong.

"It's not because Wilf has not done enough, it's because we have got big, big competition and there are a lot of players to give some playing time to.

"Unfortunately we've not been able to do that with Wilf. If I can't do a lot for him by January then I will look at it.

"We've not had the right opportunity to introduce him as much as we'd like but he's very much in my plans."

However having to move to another club on loan isn't the end of the world, in fact look at flavour of the month Andros Townsend as a perfect example of the loan system really benefiting a player. Townsend has spent time on loan at 9 different clubs and his most recent loan spell with QPR who were in the Premiership at the time convinced his parent club manager AVB to give him a run in the first team.

Now he may be one of the first names on the team sheet and his England career got off to the best of starts with a goal against Montenegro and a MOTM performance to boot.

If United do end up loaning Zaha out in January, I'm confident there will be a whole host of clubs banging on the door to try and secure the signature.