News: The rebuild goes on... - The summer 2020 transfer thread

That guy (or one of them ) should be Upamecano, especially as revealed his new buyout clause in the contract he recently signed is only £36.5M - no brainer (watch the scramble).

https://www.teamtalk.com/news/liverpool-and-man-utd-dayot-upamecano-battle

 

Did we get Sancho yet? Our biggest transfer target?

 

Man Utd are still confident of signing Sancho ....

(like how the donkey is still confident he will get to eat the carrot on the end of the stick)

 

No wonder he prefers to be called Amad Traore

 

Reports out now that we missed out on every single priority target Ole asked the board to sign. Every single one.

Cool.

 

How not manage a billion dollar company, manchester united a case study parallels to GE.

 

?

 

Maybe we can pivot like IBM and just start consulting other football clubs on what not to do. You know, after we're liquidated and sold off. Wonder if we'll still sell merch.

 

Apparently Tobin Heath and Christen Press shirt sales have been more than the men.

 

That's great news. I hope the club starts losing money.

 

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/amad-diallo/profil/spieler/536835

 

Manchester United transfers since 2013: the 15 windows of Woodward

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ows-of-ed-woodward?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

AS Roma shares down 13%, maybe their shareholders just found that they signed Smalling.

 

Let Sergio go.

 

We did him so dirty!!

 

I believe Ruud pointed out how the long delay in the Smalling deal proved the ineptitude of Ed and Judge more than Sancho. I say put Romero and the selling of guys Ole clearly listed as unwanted as proof. I mean we still have Jones and Rojo along with Lingard ffs.

 

As much as people want to stay on shitting Ed, people need to start looking at those who continue to employ him. I know the United faithful hate the Glazers but the press has let them off easy in recent times.

 

I have no desire to moan over the last 15 windows, but the last few windows could have been so fruitful, if we'd used our brains.

I'm looking specifically at 2 transfers and 1 lack of a transfer.

Maguire, AWB and the RW Ghost.

In their own way, Maguire and AWB have performed ok or well at times. However, they were never what we needed.

Lets start w/ Maguire.

Why? Because 80 is top of the market. That's 'best CB in the world' money. Maguire is hugely flawed and even if we were to find the perfect partner for him, we'd still have a slow, slow turning, near oblivious oaf which puts us under strain to play a high line. We basically bought him because he was English, prem proven, not at a final destination club and an excellent passer. On the face of it, none of those is bad, but that's why you have a DoF. To identify issues down the road and shape the team over years, not single windows. Maguire may well have been the best CB we could have bought to slot right in.

If Maguire for 80 was bad, AWB for 50 was worse. The fee is okay, but not for a team that a) likes to attack and b) doesn't have a RW and apparently doesn't plan to buy a starting calibre RW ********ing ever.

What makes it even worse is our refusal to try and coach Dalot up into a better defender. We are/were far more likely to turn Dalot into a servicable defender than we are to turn AWB into a decent attacker. Given that we'll be playing on the front foot for most games, working with Dalot made more sense.


Between Maguire, AWB & Dalot we've spent £160M.

That's 3 defenders who are deeply flawed. I'm ignoring Bailly & Lindelof because, believe it or not, they are less flawed than Maguire and they were about market rate for a CB, if not cheap for players you could use as CB2 or CB3.

Now... prior to buying Maguire we lacked a defensive leader and someone who could be spring the counter with excellent passing. Maguire ticks the passing box, but he's not much of a leader as say Axel Tuanzebe is. Axel does far more point & clicking and is far more vocal when getting midfielders into position. We might have survived simply by adding a competent RB, improving our 6 or doing both.

If we'd paid top dollar for an elite attacking RB, he wouldn't have cost Dalot + AWB money. He'd have cost maybe AWB money.

If we'd ignored CB because we had on our books: Smalling, Jones, Rojo, Bailly, Lindelof, Tuanzebe & Mengi... and instead focused on landing an elite 6, we'd have a functional midfield and a shielded back 4.

We'd have spent maybe 120M. We could move Smalling, Jones & Rojo on for small fees to clear their wages and use whatever we raised from their sales/salary to target a RW. For the 40M or so, we probably wouldn't land a world beater, we wouldn't be as desperate for one because we'd have an elite attacking RB to shoulder some of the load. Hell, with an elite 6, an elite 8 and a very good 8/10, we'd have the midfield to tilt the field. We could rely on the RB for width and having Mason/Mata/Jesse as RW options would be fine while we waited for one of our kids or a new purchase to find their feet.

We could have spent exactly the same money we'd spent on Maguire, AWB & Dalot and had functional pieces in place and a much stronger team.

As it is, every 2 or 3 windows we have to spend 80M correcting mistakes we spent 100+ million in making.

I understand we don't want to plonk down 120M for Sancho, but if we are going to try to cut back our spending, we need to start by spending on the right players to begin with. I know I'm preaching to the choir but a DoF is as important as a competent manager. We have neither.

 

It is interesting that with both Haaland and Reguilon we didn’t like the release clause / ‘option to buy’ as we felt such clauses were beneath us.

As per @johno post above, we have in the recent past spent world-class money on not world-class targets. As per this window, we took a pass on spending world-class money on a RWF world-class target because we wouldn’t/couldnt afford it. However we also passed up spending non-world-class money too - so are left with a gap.

As such we have starter-quality gaps in a number of other positions such as #6, attacking RB etc.

Bottom line, we still consider ourselves a final destination club - but for world-class players we probably are not any longer. Especially as the penny must have dropped with all Man Utd supporters by now that the Glazers don’t care about winning - top four is sufficient to keep the piggy-bank paying out their dividends.

If we are just a top-six club, with owners who only aspire to top-four finishes, then we need to pivot and recognise we are not a final destination club for top talent. That means we need to cover the squads holes by getting more players in at less coast (ie not world-class players). World-class talents such as Sancho are probably beyond us, unless there are more offers such as Haaland and Reguilon where we have to suck up release clauses/options and recognize they are only with us for a while.

Sad days, but is the conclusion I am reaching. Certainly if you look at our record since SAF it is what it is. Will be a decade in the wilderness soon ....

 

Under different circumstances, this window would have been very entertaining or even fun for fans. If we had addressed problem areas in the past, signing a veteran elite forward, a promising CM and a pair of wildcard attackers would have been immensely satisfying. Instead is just wreaks of desperation, a lack of direction, planning and even a scintila of competence.

We are literally a joke.