![]() ![]() Fast forward six years and Jones is currently working his way back to fitness in preparation for his role as the club’s fifth choice centre-back. Signed for £16m from Blackburn Rovers as a 19-year-old by Sir Alex Ferguson, on the day United sealed the 2012-13 title with a win against Aston Villa, his manager proclaimed he was going to be “a phenomenal player”. Photograph: Matthew Peters/Manchester United/Getty Imagesĭescribed entirely accurately in The Guardian as “a genuine Rolls Royce player” during his first season as a United player, these days the type of car that springs more readily to mind at the mere mention of Jones’s name is the kind of collapsible jalopy you see driven through circus Big Tops by clowns. He is currently making his way back from injury and recently featured in a behind-closed-doors friendly. Phil Jones in pre-season training with Manchester United. It was a brutal, self-deprecatory pre-emptive strike from a player who almost certainly knew that if he didn’t poke fun at his refusal to take up the offer, his many detractors almost certainly would. “Apart from my mum and dad, who else would turn up?” he said, upon being asked why he’d turned it down. Reported to be on wages somewhere in the region of £100,000 per week and tied to the club until the summer of 2023, Jones was entitled to a clause in his new deal guaranteeing him a testimonial year after the decade’s service he marked in June. One suspects his silence probably suits them just fine. ![]() Although still a going concern, these days Jones’s Twitter account lies dormant and remains untroubled even by dutiful nods to his boot sponsors. Even in February 2019, when he signed a new deal that could extend his stay at the club to a dozen years, he elected not to mention this milestone day in his career, presumably all too aware of the avalanche of ill-feeling it would prompt from “fans”. While Jones has probably sampled the Wood Manchester dining experience in the intervening four years, the player has not gone near Twitter since. Despite the player having played perfectly well in the game, his post was greeted – like almost all of his invariably well-meaning attempts at any kind of engagement – by toxic abuse from United supporters who don’t consider him fit to wear the club shirt. Largely bland and unremarkable like the rest of his Twitter output, Jones’s message to the man who had overseen the preparation of his dinner was written a day after he had helped United keep a clean sheet in a demolition of Crystal Palace at Old Trafford. ![]()
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