![\"Heaven](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_GettyImages-2225344255.jpg\")
Heaven joined United in January<\/p>\nAyden Heaven has only played six times for Man United but he’s made a thoroughly favourable impression at the club.Heaven joined United in January<\/p>\n
Ayden Heaven is intent on becoming a goalscoring centre back for Manchester United<\/a>.<\/p>\n United signed Heaven, 18, from Arsenal for a \u00a31.5million compensation fee in the winter transfer window and the centre back has been a revelation.<\/p>\n Heaven has only played six times for United but he made a stunning impression on his first Champions League<\/a> and Premier League<\/a> starts in back-to-back victories against Real Sociedad and Leicester City.<\/p>\n A foot injury in the latter fixture sidelined Heaven for two months but the Londoner is well placed to challenge for a starting spot in head coach Ruben Amorim’s back three.<\/p>\n Heaven is the only natural left-footed centre half available to Amorim as Lisandro Martinez continues his rehabilitation from an anterior cruciate ligament injury. Heaven scored in United’s post-season tour victory against a Hong Kong XI in May and he came close to breaking the deadlock in the goalless draw with Leeds in Stockholm last week.<\/p>\n “I was surprised at the amount of games I played but I knew when I was going to play I was going to make an impact,” Heaven said.<\/p>\n “I just try to be calm whenever I have the ball, and just pick the right passes. It helps if you have a calm mind and just play. I can play in the middle on the left, but the left probably more suits me because of my ability with the ball.<\/p>\n “I can drive with the ball, I can overlap if I’m needed to and I can just get forward more. That’s one of my biggest strengths.<\/p>\n “When I was younger I was obviously an attacker, but it was when I was around 14, 15 when I had a massive growth spurt and I started to filter back a bit.<\/p>\n “I started off at left back, then I went to left side to centre back, and that’s when I started looking up to the likes of (Virgil) van Dijk and William Saliba, and players like that.<\/p>\n “I watched them very closely, the likes of Saliba and Gabriel (Magalhaes), and I learned a lot from them. You can see they’re quite good in the air from corners.<\/p>\n “I want to score more, and I’m working on that. That’s what I want to add to my game, scoring from set pieces. I just feel [chipping in with goals] is so important because, as you can see in a modern game, scoring from set pieces changes the game really, and it’s so important.<\/p>\n “Obviously the goal in Hong Kong shows my quality, and I just want to continue and try to score more.”<\/p>\n The United hierarchy is targeting a top-six finish after ending last season in a humiliating 15th. United have no European football in their schedule, so will have greater recovery time than the nine teams competing in Uefa competitions.<\/p>\n United have gone two years without qualifying for the Champions League, the first time that has happened since they re-entered the competition in 1993. Heaven believes that Champions League qualification is a realistic aim.<\/p>\n “As you can see from United’s history, we’ve won the Champions League three times,” Heaven added. “I think that’s where we belong, really, and we will be back there in a matter of time.<\/p>\n “It’s going to be six or seven days in between each game. It’s a lot of time for us to recover in between each game and it’s going to put us in the best place possible to finish as high as we want.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayden Heaven has only played six times for Man United but he’s made a thoroughly favourable impression at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":95704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[1524,3898,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-95703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ayden-heaven","9":"tag-manchester-united-fc","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114923042512595205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Heaven](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_GettyImages-2225982178.jpg\")
Heaven came close to scoring against Leeds in Stockholm<\/p>\n![\"Heaven](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0_GettyImages-2217071143.jpg\")
Heaven scored in Hong Kong(Image: Yu Chun Christopher Wong\/Manchester United via Getty Images.)<\/p>\n