There have been plenty of players who have made the leap from the Football League to the Premier League in recent years.
Dele Alli made an almost immediate impact when he swapped MK Dons for Tottenham. Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, John Stones, Jack Butland and James Maddison have all shown the gap to be bridgeable pretty quickly. Many have gone on to have successful Premier League careers.
So as Daniel James gets to grips with his rapid rise and his status as Manchester United’s first signing of a crucial summer, there are examples to take inspiration from for the Welshman as he looks to make his mark at Old Trafford.
It’s all come very quickly for James. Less than two years ago he had a loan spell cut short at League One Shrewsbury Town after just 62 days, having only played for their reserves.
This time last year James had yet to make his first league start for Swansea in the Championship. Now he’s preparing for life under the spotlight as a United player.
The 21-year-old certainly suggested he has the prodigious gifts to make an impact at the club last season, notably a blistering turn of foot and an increasingly cool eye for goal.
But in looking to thrive when stepping up from the Football League to the top flight, he might be wise to focus on those players above who have enjoyed such success, rather than any of his predecessors at Old Trafford.
That’s because it hasn’t been a successful path for many of the players United have plucked from the lower leagues. In fact you probably have to go back to the 1990 signing of Dennis Irwin from Oldham and the 1991 acquisition of Paul Parker from Queens Park Rangers as the last outfield players United signed from a league below to make a success of their time at the club.
Roy Carroll, signing from third tier Wigan in 2001, and Ben Foster, arriving in 2005 from second tier Stoke City, both had reasonable careers at the club as back-up goalkeepers.
But in more recent times making the jump from the relative obscurity of the Football League to playing for United has been a weight too heavy to carry.
In 2012/13 United plucked two players from the lower leagues, spending around £4million on Crewe Alexandra prodigy Nick Powell, who had just fired the Railwaymen out of League Two, and agreeing a deal for Crystal Palace attacker Wilfried Zaha, which would come into force in the summer of 2013.
Neither had the impact they would have hoped for at Old Trafford. Powell made just nine appearances for the club across four seasons, with only three of them in the Premier League. Loan moves to Wigan Athletic, Leicester City and Hull City were indifferent before his 2016 permanent switch to the Latics, where he begun to rebuild his career without ever suggesting he had what it takes to make it at the highest level.
The case with Zaha is far more complex. Like James the winger, then 20, was making waves in the Championship. United signed him in January 2013 on a five-and-a-half year deal, before loaning him back to Crystal Palace for the second half of that campaign. Palace would be promoted via the play-offs that season, with Zaha registering eight goals and eight assists.
If helping his side to promotion was Zaha’s parting gift to the Eagles, his £10million arrival at Old Trafford was considered at the time to be Sir Alex Ferguson’s final gift to United.
But Zaha’s spell at the club was a disaster. David Moyes never really took a shine to him and Zaha would make just four appearances for the club before returning to Palace.
He has thrived again since going back to south London and, now 26, could be set for a big-money move this summer. United were right to spot the potential in Zaha, even if his time at the club turned sour as his relationship with Moyes disinegrated.
Again United have identified a young, talented winger they believe can adapt from the Championship to one of the world’s biggest clubs, but James will hope to prove he is a very different case to that of Zaha.
The Manchester United transfer warning that Daniel James must overcome - Manchester Evening News
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