Any season in a competitive league involves a series of gambles before the season starts, even if it's just standing pat. Some gambles work, some do not. They're all calculated risks - and if you're smart, over time, the successful gambles will outweigh the failures. After winning the title, SAF decided that the team was not good enough to win the CL and had peaked. He felt it was time to change styles, dramatically. So he sold Beckham and went for Ronaldinho, which would have switched play from the flanks to the middle of the field. Oops. Ronaldinho didn't come. So Alex decided, well there's nobody else available who will take my team over the top - time to build for the future. He went for less proven players, but bought a lot of them so as to dilute the overall risk. How much of it has worked out? Ronaldo has been a qualified success. He doesn't consistently play like 12m man, but he does so often enough that at his age, it looks like money well spent. Howard, though his form dipped for a while, has also been a good gamble. Remarkably, it appears that every other pre-season gamble SAF took turned out poorly. Kleberson has been pretty decent in central midfield - but he's been crowded out in a #'s game. A good MC who never plays MC is worthless. Bellion appears more raw even than anyone knew. Djemba-Djemba has worse passing skills than Phil Neville. Fergie gambled by not buying another defender when most wanted one. He lost his gamble - Rio banned, Wes Brown looks like he'll never fulfill his potential, O'Shea has regressed, and stop gaps like Fortune have been inconsistent. He gambled that Darren Fletcher would be able to contribute and be a badly needed extra wide-player. He's been terrible. He gambled that we'd have enough firepower with Ruud, Forlan, and Solksjaer, even though most thought United needed another striker. Once again, he lost that gamble. Were many of these really bad gambles? Actually, I don't think so... except for possibly the striker issue. But when you play a single striker formation, it looks silly to have 4 excellent strikers, from a certain perspective. I disagree - but I understand. Is it really that unreasonable to expect either O'Shea or Brown to be a good CB this season? No. And it's probably unnecessary to have 4 dedicated CBs (O'Shea has always been intended for hte middle). Moreover, Alex could not have prevented Rio's ban - although injuries are always a factor - though a season ending one to our best defender would have been very unlucky indeed. SAF has lost on almost every risk he took this year. Yet they were not, for the most part, bad risks. So perhaps we shouldn't blame him too much. Of course, I'm leaving out his crucial decision over the break not to buy another defender (and another wide player). I think, in the long-term, that this decision will have blown a chance at the title. But, still, I think the # of decent gambles that haven't paid off this year is remarkable.
um, i seem to remember you bought a young lad called Saha as well...he hasn't done bad so far. btw, for what it's worth, i think selling Beckham was a big mistake. it also saddens me how quickly the United fans i know have forgot about him. No team in the world can sell Beckham and not be a worse team because of it.
I hear you, haven... This has been a rough season to take - certainly we aren't used to a February flop! But let's step back from the situation for a moment - hasn't at least some of our losing come purely from bad luck? Scholes out, OGS out, Rio banned? Remember - the problem wasn't that SAF failed to sign a defender; he tried desperately, didn't he? The problem, IIRC, was that no defender was either available at a good price or wanted to come play for eight months and then sit on the bench. MU expects a top class player at that position and there just aren't *any* top class players who want to be bench players when Rio comes back. And yes, selling Becks hurts - terribly. I even bought a Beckham Madrid jersey He is just so much fun to watch when he is "on". And Scouse is right, of course - no team can lose a player of Beckham's caliber and not be penalized. Question: If we still had Beckham, would Rio's ban have been as painful? I argue that Beckham's presence would be stronger than anything else SAF has put out wide this season and that we would not have conceeded as many goals and scored more (I know... going out on a limb here, right?). Also, Becks can play central which would have provided cover for Scholes when he went out. I am Ronaldo's #1 fan but he's not Beckham yet. He may well turn into Beckham three or four years from now but we've got a wait ahead of us on that. Another gamble: Freezing out Butt at the expense of Phil Neville What's Phil doing that's so special? I can't see it - seriously, someone point something out for me to look for, please. I'm not being coy; I just am not seeing what he adds to the team. I certainly can't see how he's won out over Nick Butt who is just a fabulous player in my book. We have so much talent in the center of the pitch; putting Phil in that spot just has baffled me this season. We now run the risk of losing Nicky while keeping Phil.
Sometimes you have to take one step backward to take three steps forward. As much as I loved Beckham, you have to move him when he has value. There is nothing wrong with planning for the future. I think SAF sees the big picture. In a few years when all these youngsters mature, I can see a two or three year run where we have a serious chance of winning the Treble again.
I think Fergie is indeed planning for the future with this team, much as he did back in 1995. Of course, that team went on the win the Double, something that looks like a stretch for us this year. But to me, this seems like a team he envisions getting on after he leaves. I think he is trying to avoid making the same mistake that Matt Busby made, in not bringing in new talent before he left, leading the team to be relegated. While I don't think United are in any danger of that, I think Fergie wants to at least plant the seeds for another title run, as well as another run in the Champions League--maybe one that will occer after he leaves his post. What disappoints me somewhat is the "rebuilding" stance that the team seems to have taken on this year. Look at the turnover--new young players include Howard, Ronaldo, Dj2, Kleberson, Saha. Why the feeling that the team last year had to be dismantled so quickly? Save for a 15 minute stretch against Real Madrid, we may have actually been the best team in Europe last year. Instead of trying to add the final piece of the puzzle, it seems like we decided to start over, dumping Becks and Veron, and essentially bringing in replacements for our entire midfield. You could see the astonishment on my face at some of the results we were getting early in the year with a relatively inexperienced group. But now it seems like the true colors are coming through. This team has yet to meld, and that is something that will take time. To really play that beautiful football that the United teams of the late 90s and early 00's played, the entire team will really have to get on, youngsters and veterans alike. I'm kind of sensing some animosity between the guys who have "been there done that", and the kids who are coming in to eventually take their place. That said, this isn't the time to throw in our chips. I have a great admiration for the "never say die" attitude of this club. It paid off on a pleasant May evening in Barcelona in 1999, as well as during a ten-week stretch in early 2003. Who's to say it can't happen again?
SAF sold Beckham because of his own foolish pride, no other reason. I agee with you here. (everyone will pile on me for saying this because I'm an Arsenal fan, if this came from a Manu fan, which it has in other spots, I think you'd agree) You DID have the best team in Europe last year IMO with one exception, Barthez. He gave up 2 ugly goals to Madrid in the first leg, which pretty much doomed the side for the second. Including the first to Ronaldo were he was beaten at the near post on a shot 35 yards out. I think simply adding Howard would have been all the changes you should have made. Though to be far no one knew how Howard would have turned out. But oh well, better for us.
The above post explicitly refers primarily to the preseason[/] decisions SAF took. I did mention the decision to not bring in a defender after the break... but it wasn't the focus of the post.
I think there's some truth in the above that we're in a rebuilding phase though I'm not sure that was deliberate. But for me, the failure to bring in an quality experienced defender during the January window was an abysmal dereliction of duty. Blind Freddie could see we needed defensive depth - four genuine defenders, one of them O'Shea badly out of form, another coming back from a very long break and no reason to believe he could replace Rio anyway, G Neville only picked because there's no one better. Just one defender - Silvestre - is a first choice player. Relying on defensive mids to fill in for injured or non-performing players is something I might expect from Wimbledon but not from a club with Utd's resources. And on the rebuilding - where are the defenders of tomorrow? There seems to be a very myopic approach to defence. Had we bought a quality defender either last off-season or in January we could now still have a fair chance of catching Arsenal. But now the defence is so weak that it's affecting the midfield choices and even making it difficult to make full use of Saha. I do not understand the failure to see the problem. Alex, the board, I don't know where it comes from but someone needs a kick where it hurts most.
Sir Alex... ...Ferguson needs to buy some proven players. He sold proven players in Beckham and Veron, and bought un-proven players in Bellion, Djemba-Djemba, Kleb, Ronaldo. With Ronaldo the exception those other players have been rubbish. Hope United will buy Robben and Joaquin. I have actually found United boring to watch this season. Their doing nothing exciting, even Ronaldo not doing his 100 step overs. They need to get an assistant manager as well. We have always needed an assistant and its not looking good without one. We have had Kidd, McClaren and the Real Madrid Manager!!!!! Get some one in now. United also need to give some players the chop. Wes Brown, Quinton Fortune, Darren Fletcher, Nicky Butt, Diego Forlan, David Bellion all need to say good bye. They should play Phil Neville in his proper position at left back as they dont actually have a proper one. Look at Arsenal and Chelsea who have Cole and Bridge, two proper left backs. Also
Maybe I have misunderstood what you're asking but I see that we have a very young defense as it is. Here are some rough ages (not exactly sure if they're 100% correct though; quick tally): * O'Shea - 22 * Brown 24/5 * Rio - 25 * Fortune 26 * Silvestre - 26 * P. Neville - 27 * G. Neville - 29 (as of last week) Some of these are very young men with bright Red futures. Seriously - we had a fantastic defense with decent depth last season. As billyho said, had it not been for The Clown last season, we might have been in the CL Finals. Our defensive field play was excellent last year. In August, no one was screaming about getting new defenders; we were all saying how we needed another striker. About the only serious thing people were talking about was Keane helping out for depth in the center and possibly a left back. And it wasn't just Rio going schizo and forgetting to take his test that's causing problems; it's O'Shea's breakdown, Wes' loss of confidence, and the failure of Gazza to keep his temper since Rio's fiasco. And I'm definitely agreeing that the defensive lapses are causing roster changes; we did expect that Keane would help out defensively (for depth) though. I would've loved a new left back in the Summer but how much would that have helped *right now*? We have O'Shea sucking, Gary out, Silvestre out, and Rio out Yes, it would have helped but seriously, we're just having all sorts of problems back there right now and I'm not sure that a single signing would've solved all of this.
Re: Sir Alex... Have to disagree with you on Klebs. When he plays his natural position of central midfielder, he brings steadniess and creativity. He can also create an attack out of nothing. It's when he gets stuck on the right that he has problems. Excellent post, bigtoga. Remember when we were talking about how excellent our defense was at the beginning of the year? The problem is not that we didn't sign a defender last summer, it's that we didn't sign a defender in January when we knew we would have depth problems. This summer we need to sign a TRUE left back and let O'Shea be a sub (he can play almost any position in the back). Brown can also be a defensive sub or even gradually take over for G Nev at right back.
You are assuming that Kleb and Scholes are similar players, and they aren't. Scholes is more of an attacking midfielder/forward. Klebs is more of a complete central midfielder. Klebs is more versatile in defense than Scholes (bad things happen when Scholes retreats to defense). Klebs can play all over the pitch; Scholes is more limited to attacking. It's good to have versatile players. Klebs could replace Scholes or Keane (and he is much younger than both).
Re: Re: Sir Alex... I agree with your latest post about Klebs being different from Scholes and regardless of what others think now, in years to come, they will see how useful he can be. IMO anyone that can start in Brazil's midfield is a class player... But about your post above.... We could have and should have signed a quality Center Back... money for salary or for transfer fee should not have been an option... Playing time is silly too... We buy Ayala, Nesta, Canavaro, Lucio somebody, anybody who is top class... they come and play next to Silvestre until Rio returns and then we put Silvestre wide left... Nothing wrong with that, or if the player is versatile, we could play that person wide right, I love Gary, but mentally he is not all there half of the time. If Silvestre does not work at LB we could always, sell him, or sell the new guy... we could have put a clause into the contract that would allow the player to be sold if he was not happy with playing time... All in all, when a club has the financial assest that ManU does you can always have 1 extra player or 2, but never be 2 or 3 players short... at the least we would be able to win the FA Cup, compete in CL and EPL with more depth in defense... Ok, so thats all for your post Potomac In general now... we will be a monster team next year... If we go out and sign Arjen Robben and add an even better CR7 to a unified front of Ruud and Saha, we will be a potent offensive force... OGS and Forlan as back up strikers would offer us the depth to rest players like Ruud and Saha... The central mids we have now allow us to play different styles and Our defense will not suffer from an 8 month Rio ban. What we need: One more defender One less central mid... Butt most likely to leave Arjen Robben to spell Giggs and eventually replace him and offer cover at striker If these elements are added we will be unbeatable next season for a couple reasons... our new players will be better, the Robben/Ronaldo/Klebs become the new nucleus for us and get lots of playing time together against the so called lesser clubs and I'm sorry, but fielding those guys against suspect opposition is going to be fun...
I don't find the reason why everyone is mad at the acquisitions made by SAF over the summer. I agree that we are in a kind of reconstruction but sometimes you have to give time to some players as not everyone can make an inmediate impact. I don't think that Kleberson and Bellion are playing bad, they need to adapt to EPL but i am amazed at the way Howard and Ronaldo has been playing so far. I feel that the only wrong signing was Dj-Dj. I also feel that SAF should have kept either Beckham or Veron. The current squad is pretty good but this is not reflected in our performance mostly because of Ferdinand's suspension, the recent poor defensive form, and the lack of a true striker to support Ruud.
mtkillamanjohno: I don't disagree with anything you said (enjoyed your post too). I guess the point I was trying to make was that it was a WORSE mistake to not sign a CB in January rather than last summer. Would love to see Silvestre move back to left-back (he is a good but not great CB) and find a world-class partner for Rio (who is now world class himself...except for forgetting to piss in a cup). If O'Shea could play right back I would like to see him get more time. He seems to play better when he doesn't have all the pressure on him and he is excellent going forward.
* O'Shea - 22 * Brown 24/5 * Rio - 25 * Fortune 26 * Silvestre - 26 * P. Neville - 27 * G. Neville - 29 (as of last week) Then let's look at that in depth: O'Shea - beginning to look like one of those players who looks good when he first moves into the senior squad but then fails to live up to that later. I hope he isn't one of those players who disappears as quick as he appeared but he's been unreliable all season and should not be in a major Premiership defence at this point in time. Brown. Injury prone. Has been out for 10 months or so. Even when fit has never really looked convincing - hence our flirtation with Blanc. Currently his confidence must be rock bottom. Rio. Excellent player. Pity we've lost him for the season. But in January it wasn't exactly unkown that we were to lose him. Fortune. Defensive midfield - in fact not even sure I would use the word "defensive" there. Has played well at left back precisely because of our lack of depth. Was probably the worst player on the field on Saturday. Not to be trusted there. Silvestre. Excellent CB alongside the steadying influence of Ferdinand. Not sure he plays that well with others though. P. Neville. Fills in but even Alex now says his best position is central midfield. G Neville. Adequate right back but not much more. Apt to make too many serious errors. In short there are just 5 genuine defenders there: O'Shea, Brown, Rio, Silvestre and Neville. Then we're robbing midfield. Only two of the five (Rio and Silvestre) can genuinely be called quality defenders. That's woeful for a club with Utd's resources! >Seriously - we had a fantastic defense with decent depth last season. We had five defenders! Fortunately we had no serious injuries. Rio and Silvestre are excellent defenders and we had them for the majority of the season. Barthez wasn't nearly as bad as you make out. He had lapses but he also made many a superb save. >In August, no one was screaming about getting new defenders You have a short memory. I suggest you go back and look at the posts on this section of the board and you'll see something very different. A defender was second only in many fans minds to a replacement for Beckham. >About the only serious thing people were talking about was Keane helping out for depth in the center and possibly a left back. I suggest you go back and look. >And it wasn't just Rio going schizo and forgetting to take his test that's causing problems; it's O'Shea's breakdown, Wes' loss of confidence, and the failure of Gazza to keep his temper since Rio's fiasco. Which refers to just about our entire defence except of Silvestre. Injuries and suspensions happen. With only five defenders you're bound to hit trouble at some time unless you're very lucky as we were last year. Over the last 5 matches we've only really had Rio out yet our defence has been leaking goals like a sieve. It was predictable - O'Shea has been awol all season and Brown was always going to take time to come back. It was far too optimistic that he would immediately slip into Rio's boots. Now we have the sort of situation most clubs face during a season - Rio out, Silvestre injured and Neville out. Our defence now looks absolutely woeful. So bad half the fans are omitting Saha, an addition up front who has sparkled and transformed out attacking play, from the lineup precisely because they don't believe we can risk only 4 men in midfield. Only four! We're so bad at the back that we need not just one defensive midfield (despite having a player like Keane) but two to protect central defence. >we did expect that Keane would help out defensively (for depth) though. In an injury crisis yes. But we were already considering Keane when only two players were out. Losing Keane from defensive midfield is not a minor problem as was obvious on Saturday. I certainly wouldn't be happy at this point with Butt or Neville alone in front of this defence. >I would've loved a new left back in the Summer but how much would that have helped *right now*? I think you'll find the more incisive comments in the off-season wanted a right back/centre back player though there was no shortage of CBs mentioned. Such a player would have been enormously helpful now. > We have O'Shea sucking, Gary out, Silvestre out, and Rio out The awful defensive performances we've seen so far came BEFORE either Gary or Silvestre were out. We have yet to see just what the loss of those two does. >Yes, it would have helped but seriously, we're just having all sorts of problems back there right now and I'm not sure that a single signing would've solved all of this. It would have meant that, over the last 4 weeks since Rio has been out, we wouldn't have had to play the out of form O'Shea or put such enormous pressure on Brown. That would have helped enormously. There's a silly idea here that a couple of injuries is a injury crisis. It isn't! We have been very lucky over the last few seasons and have never really had a major problem. This season we have had only three problems: Solksjaer out, Scholes out and Brown out and Brown was never a first choice player. We suffered the missing Solksjaer because of the lack of depth up front - only RvN a worthwhile striker. We suffered the missing Scholes because we don't have another attack midfield player. That's why we were after Ronaldinho. Brown has become important only since we lost Rio and with another defender that wouldn't have been necessary either. At the start of this season we needed three players - an attacker (now solved with Saha), an attack midfield (because we lost both Beckham and Veron and failed to get Ronaldinho) and a RB/CB quality defender. We got none of them until Saha in January. Instead we got a bunch of youngsters who may make it in a couple of season's time or may not. We still need a defender and if Kleberson continues to be very inconsistent (very poor on Saturday despite being in central midfield) then we need an attack midfield as well. With today's fixture lists you need a squad of around 18 reliable players. Utd don't have anything like that at the moment. At least two more are needed if we are genuinely to compete with the best in Europe. Losing a couple of players must not affect the performance of the team in the way the loss of Rio has, yet look at our performances recently and we've only really had Rio and Solksjaer missing regularly. And if you look at the matches before Rio went, then there were many very unimpressive performances. Indeed I can only remember 2 games in which we played well for 90 minutes.
Great thread. Here is a slightly different slant on the 'gambles gone wrong' theme; - bringing Wes straight back from long-term injury into centre-back, he should have had a few games at right-back to get match fit and confident - going 4-5-1 for all premiership games, maybe we did have success with this, but it meant when we changed to 4-4-2 the mids had all forgotten how to retain possession without the numbers - changing to 4-4-2 just as we lost Rio and hence putting a different back two under more pressure (I was up for this at the time, but it didn't work out) - buying new players and not allowing them to settle by having a decent run in the side, when you have just bought Klebs and Dj-Dj can you afford 'the Fletcher experiment'? - playing players out-of-position, Scholes on the right, Giggs as a second striker, Giggs on the right, Kleberson on the right, Forlan as a striker, Fletcher as a premiership player, OK those last two were not serious I do not think a club of United's status needs to play make shift. I do feel that the 'plc' thing is hurting us in the transfer market as it appears we cannot do one thing until we have done another andn by the time that comes around our indecision has cost us (eg buy Ronaldinho then unload Beckham). Our football has disappionted me as a spectacle, though what has disappionted me more than anything is that in times of trouble some players have failed to take responsibility. When Rio went we looked for Silvestre to take command, he seems destined to be a number two. When we kept giving the ball away, we looked to Keano to start shouting, he has been strangely quiet on the pitch. When we had no Keano against Leeds we looked to someone else to act as captain, nobody did. This may sound overly pessimistic, but I do think we have the manager and the players. As said elsewhere, Silvestre is a left-back, O'Shea is a left-back, Wes Brown is a right-back. When they have a bit more experienced O'Shea and Brown can be considered for the centre again and Silvestre can fill for injuries to the middle two. We need to buy another proven central defender and let him know that the job is his. We also need another central mid, but this time someone experienced and a little older who can become club captain both in the games that Keano is rested and for the future. Someone who will give players what-for when things are not going well. A player in the Vieira / Keno mould. A 4-4-2 with; Ruud, Saha, Giggs/Robben, Keano/<New CM>, Scholes/Klebs, Ronaldo O'Shea/Silvestre, Rio, <New Centre Back>, Brown/G Nev We need to unload Nicky Butt, Quinton Fortune, Diego Forlan, Darren Fletcher (maybe loan him out if there is something more than we have been shown). We have too many average players. Most of all, we need to settle on a more consistent side. Far too much chopping and changing this season for me.
A little perspective After 26 games last season we had 53 points as opposed to 57 this season. Arsenal however had 56 points last season, an incredible 64 this season. If they keep that average up they'll end up with 93 or 94 points which would be a Premiership record.
Re: A little perspective The current record for most points in a EPL season is 92 by MU in 93-94 but in a 42 game season. The most points for a 38 game season is 91 by MU in 99-00