The Class of 03/04

[haven]

Much is made of the famed Man Utd youth teams of the early 90's.

However, there was another, more recent attempt to transform the squad via the transfer market. This occurred for the 03/04 season the wake of David Beckham's departure. Out went Beckham, in came Kleberson, Djemba-Djemba, Bellion, Ronaldo, Howard, and then in January, Saha. That's more than 1/2 of a team.

Djemba-Djemba was supposed to a fiery battler in midfield - perhaps not the next Roy Keane, but Nicky Butt with better technique. Kleberson was supposed to be a new creative midfielder to be Scholes' successor - but with a bit more bite. He was, after all, a world cup winner and could play defensive midfielder for Brazil. Bellion was faster than Henry...and surely would make the same transformation. Howard was the new Schmeichel. Ronaldo, of course, was the new Beckham (but could actually dribble).

The results have been...disappointing. Ronaldo, imho, has been a near-total success. Those who expected the Greatest Right Winger in the World from day one may be disheartened...but Ronaldo is no doubt already an elite player who is likely to improve even more.

The others? Djemba-Djemba and Kleberson are gone. Neither ever contributed greatly and we lost money on both. Bellion is 22 and spending time in a lower division. Howard has been benched. He lost his place to a journeyman-class keeper in Roy Carroll...and has now been supplanted by a 35 year old. Saha is perpetually injured and only middling-effective when he does play.

Could it have been different? Could the same players have succeeded given more opportunities and used differently? Should different players (that we knew about then) have been purchased? I remember that we opted for Djemba-Djemba over Essien, who was allegedly available according to the media for approximately the same price. That was a terrible mistake, if true. Could we have purchased Parker instead of Kleberson? Defoe instead of Saha?

Or something else? Looking for opinions...looking back, it seems a collossal failure. Of those six players, only one has been a success. Two have been total failures. The other three I'd call "qualified failures" that could yet be salvaged. 1/6 is one hell of a poor batting average. Yet each seemed to have potential at the time. And I still remember that pre-season...when they seemed to sparkle so. We had just won the title. SAF was re-structuring the squad before it was absolutely necessary - always a good idea - to prevent slow decay. The United squad for the next half-decade seemed to be in place. But it didn't work, for whatever reason.

[StrikerCW]

Good post but you can't compare the ýouth' teams of the early ninties to these guys, as these guys were all buys that could have panned out, but didn't.

In the future we shall compare (as actually has already been done on these forums in a way) the youth of the ninties to Fletcher, O'Shea, Rossi, and dem boys.

[haven]

Good post but you can't compare the ýouth' teams of the early ninties to these guys, as these guys were all buys that could have panned out, but didn't.

In the future we shall compare (as actually has already been done on these forums in a way) the youth of the ninties to Fletcher, O'Shea, Rossi, and dem boys.

Of course, it doesn't work out perfectly.

I wasn't referring to the success of the attempt, so much as the rather interesting (in my mind at least) fact that the club could have gone through a transformation in personnel of similar degree as it did in 1995. It didn't happen - because so many of the players failed to impress. But it if had worked out, I'd wager we'd have a name for that group. Maybe not the "class of 03/04" - but something.

[Achtung]

I don't think the changes of the past few years have been part of a revolution in the way the changes in 1995 were, but instead have been more of an evolution. The players you mentioned being brought in were not to directly replace anyone at the time, with the exception of Saha for Forlan. Howard wasn't originally intended to be the starter, Ronaldo and Bellion were backup forwards, Dj2 was cover at DM (though we still had Butt and PNeville then, making it seem an awfully strange purchase), and Kleberson was cover for Scholes. It just didn't work out in that way though, and I think that it was unfortunate that so many players from that summer didn't make the cut. But that's how it goes sometimes, and it appears that it may have caused SAF to refocus efforts on the youth squad.

Could we have purchased Parker or Defoe? Perhaps, but then if you listened to the tabloids, we could have had Batistuta and Nedved as well in their day. We have who we have now, and that includes Ronaldo, Rooney, van der Sar, and Park. They already look to be better than the signings which weren't so hot.

I wish it had worked out, and I wish that we weren't sitting here thinking about who can possibly replace Keane, Scholes, and Giggs after now two seasons without winning the league. But SAF will hopefully learn from his mistakes and bring in the players who actually can succeed the current stars.

[cachundo]

In response to haven's original post, perhaps a comparison can be made only if we compared apples to apples.

One has to keep in mind that that class of Giggs, Scholes, Becks, Nevilles, Butt, etc. had time to grow up with each other; they were boys when they were brought into the system. They were allowed to grow, and learn from their mistakes while in the youth ranks.

The same can not be said of the 20-somethings brought in during the Becks housecleaning. For example, Djemba-Djemba had a bad run of form after getting injured and not seeing first-team action. another example - Kleberson [much to the consternation of Kleb apologists and idle observers in this board] was an utter disappointment. Given the chance to play, he just couldn't muster the quality that brought him to the attention of SAF in the first place. Hey, if I were also a mediocre-to-passable player, but play me with a world championship team, I can make some people pee in their pants too.

My point is that the new buys had to perform when they needed to because they were not brought in for development; they were expected to play, and make an immediate contribution. Things didn't work out and neither the organization nor the player[s] were happy with the way things turned out.

The best thing for either party is to move on. Life is too precious to ponder why Kleberson, Savage, or somebody-or-other underperformed. :)

[johno]

I disagree w/ cachundo on the Kleberson point... you can't give a player 27 games over 2 seasons mainly w/ reserve teamers and expect him to shine brilliantly more than a handful of times... and whether you recall or not, he did have 5 or so good appearances.

With regards to our purchases not going well... well, that's kinda expected. You can't expect to replace Keane, Scholes and Beckham w/ 3 purchases of non-world stars... that's what they are! World Stars. The players we brought in were not developing really... only Bellion was of the age to drastically improve and I think he could become a decent back up striker in the future which is good considering we paid 2M for him.

Look at the players we have purchased recently... Park and VDS seem to be good buys but neither of them is going to be a star long term, or replace a star long term. Park is going to be a very good player but we got lucky, he was in the last year of his contract. VDS is old so although he's quality, he wont be around for 5 years (i don't think so anyway).

These are the type of purchases were going to have to make when we are not paying top dollar, ie. Ronaldo, Rooney, Saha (who is a quality player when fit. Arghhh...)
If every 2 seasons we manage to uncover a Rossi/Jones/Fletcher type player and groom them properly there's no reason we cant continue to field excellent squads even with only the occasional big name purchase.

We can afford to strike out on Kleberson/DjDj just so long as every 3 or 4 strike outs we find a Park and a VDS where we cant afford to strike out is the Rooney type player.. we can't spend quite that much and not have excellent performance ala Veron again.

[Motterman]

We can afford to strike out on Kleberson/DjDj just so long as every 3 or 4 strike outs we find a Park and a VDS where we cant afford to strike out is the Rooney type player.. we can't spend quite that much and not have excellent performance ala Veron again.

I've been trying to think of a way to make the same point, now I don't have to. :D

[johno]

I've been trying to think of a way to make the same point, now I don't have to. :D

Just doin ma job.

[Potomac Red Devil]

Klebs played well when he played the Scholes position with the first team starters. He struggled when played out of position with the non-first teamers or the reserve players. He apparently had some off-pitch issues that he couldn't sort out, and he couldn't stay healthy.

But that's water under the bridge, and as past co-president of the KFC I'm willing to leave it at that.