Once upon a time, this season at Old Trafford was synonymous with championship aspirations. Nowadays, it seems to be more about a sense of entitlement.

Ruben Amorim recently addressed this issue, particularly among Manchester United’s younger players, before their loss to Aston Villa on Sunday. He pointed out a troubling culture that has been concerning the club for a while: how can you encourage dreams of Premier League glory in young talents without them getting carried away by their own hype?

This dilemma is a significant challenge for United’s coaching staff, spanning from the academy to the first team. It’s a situation well-known to Jonny Evans during his brief tenure as the loans manager, a role focused on securing temporary placements for the club’s promising players.

Les Parry, who spent 12 years in various roles at United, likens himself to ‘Polyfilla’ for his ability to fill numerous gaps within the organization.

As a youth-team coach, Parry witnessed the rise of academy stars like Marcus Rashford, Mason Greenwood, and Kobbie Mainoo. He also applied his sports science expertise to modernize United’s academy resources. He was pivotal in elite player development, played a crucial part in establishing the women’s team, and served as the club’s inaugural loans manager until his departure 14 months ago.

Les Parry (middle row, third from right) helped to grow Manchester United’s best young talents, as head of elite player development and loans manager

Parry rose up from physiotherapist to interim manager to permanent boss at Tranmere before joining United in January 2013

So how would he describe the sense of entitlement that has irked Amorim?

Parry replies: ‘If you’re giving a talk to the Under 16s and you say, “There’s 30 of you and only two of you will play for the first team”, every single player in the room is thinking, “I wonder who the other one is?”.

‘You can tell a 16-year-old, “You’re going to end up playing in the Conference” or whatever, say it all the b****y hell you want, but they’re not going to have it. You stress that if they’re lucky, they will end up playing in League One and League Two. We tried to lead them down that path because that’s where most of them are.

‘I think they’re good players and I watched enough of them to have an idea about what a Manchester United player might look like. But are United going to return to being one of the best teams in the world when players like that are getting in the side?’

When Amorim discussed his reasons for not picking Mainoo this season, and mentioned Toby Collyer and Harry Amass facing challenges on loan in the Championship, or Chido Obi struggling to get a game for the Under 21s, the message was clear: there is a rose-tinted view at United of players from the academy.

‘I think that’s fair,’ nods Parry. ‘That’s what I’m saying about expectations. “He’s a United player, he should be able to play in the Championship.” Well, the Championship is harder than the Premier League in some aspects.’

The 68-year-old recalls having ‘a bit of a barney’ with Under 16s coach Neil Ryan for once giving in to Greenwood’s demand to play up front instead of on the wing. ‘I told him, “He’s won Neil”. You think that if we’d done it differently, would things have been different with Mason?

‘Marcus Rashford has always known he’s an elite player. You’re giving them a stamp in the middle of their heads. They know they get treated slightly differently.’

United manager Ruben Amorim has cited the likes of Chido Obi (left) and Toby Collyer (second right) as examples of the club’s youngsters not quite being up to scratch 

He also mentioned Harry Amass, the young left back who is out on loan at Sheffield Wednesday

It can cause problems when players honed in United’s academy end up out on loan at other clubs. Parry recalls being summoned to one Premier League rival because a youngster in his first week on loan there had shouted ‘what time do you call this?’ when the manager was late onto the training ground.

Another making his debut on loan in League One interrupted the manager’s half-time talk to tell his new team-mates to give him the ball.

‘He was 18,’ says Parry. You had international players in there who’d played 200 games in the Premier League. Just keep your mouth shut and get on with it.’

United currently have 17 players out on loan from a pool of 86, including senior stars like Rashford, Rasmus Hojlund, Jadon Sancho and Andre Onana. Usually, the number of youngsters going out increases in the second half of the season.

Parry first stepped into the role of loans manager when he heard that left back Cameron Borthwick-Jackson was struggling at Wolves and then Leeds in 2017. He recognised the need for someone to monitor the progress and welfare of Under 21s players who had left United for the first time and might be struggling living away from home or not being in the team.

Not all of the problems were serious, though. ‘One lad called me to say the heating had gone off,’ laughs Parry. ‘I said: “Do you realise who you’ve rung?”

‘They would moan about the food and say they haven’t got the range we’ve got at United. Listen, you need to lower your sights a little bit. They don’t go on loan to have a fairytale experience, they go on loan to have a footballing experience.

‘We tried to prime them by asking the loan club questions. Do they have to take their own kit home? Do they get breakfast and lunch, or do they have to pay for it? Do you have overnighters or travel to matches on the day? What’s the gym like?

Parry first realised the need for a loans manager when he heard about Cameron Borthwick-Jackson (left) struggling while at Wolves and Leeds

Marcus Rashford and Rasmus Hojlund are two of United’s 17 loanees this season

‘We’d tell the players: “Don’t be laughing when there’s no roof on the gym because all the tiles have come off. Get used to only having 10 balls and needing to pick them up after training or having no waterproofs.” Most of them are going to end up playing at that level anyway.

‘There was still the odd player who was attached to Carrington by an umbilical cord and used any excuse to come back and see the medical staff. We didn’t want them dropping in every two minutes because they’d got a bit of a dead leg.’

It was a challenging job and one that involved negotiating deals for United’s young players.

‘If somebody’s on £5,000 a week, you’re lucky if you get £500 towards them,’ says Parry. ‘If the club they’re joining don’t make a contribution, they tend to abuse us and waste the players really. They’ll take them for nothing because it gives them another member of the squad just in case.

‘Sometimes they could only pay £300 and the finance people would come back to me and say, “Can you get another 50 quid?”. I’d say, “We’re United, aren’t we?”. So you’re fighting all the time. Honestly, it isn’t easy being loans manager at United.’

A former manager and physio at Tranmere Rovers, Parry first joined United shortly before Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 and discovered a club that ‘had success despite the way they ran things’.

‘Their go-to statement was, “Well, we’ve done all right up to now, haven’t we?”,’ he says. ‘I had a few ding-dongs with staff who just kept everything on their own laptops. What if a bus hits them on the way to work? I put all the procedures in place; recording data, all of the reviews, the programmes, that sort of stuff.’

It included a battery of physical tests on young players that hadn’t existed before, mapping their speed, agility and maturation.

Kobbie Mainoo may be the next to head out for a spell at another club – though Bruno Fernandes’ injury may scupper the England international’s desire to leave

Parry had ‘a barney’ with a coach for giving in to Mason Greenwood’s demand to play up front. ‘You think that if we’d done it differently, would things have been different with Mason?

When Parry left United 12 years later, there was no shortage of offers and he is now working in a similar role for Saudi Pro League club FC Neom, monitoring their five loan players in Europe.

‘A little bit different in numbers to what I’m used to at United!’ says Parry, who got the job through Neom’s sporting director Kyriakos Dourekas, having first met him when United duo Dean Henderson and James Garner were on loan at Nottingham Forest.

‘They use me for other things as well. He’ll send me players to look at or phone to say, “We’re looking for a new head of finance, a head of welfare, a head analyst” and I’ll try to find people to fill the gaps.’

Still Mr Polyfilla after all these years.