What's really wild about this forum is how many people have Eriksen starting based off of one half of football in a game where Bruno also created chances. I'd start both together but Bruno has proven himself to be a star for us no matter how short people's memories are.
This same behavior has also come out in relation to transfers, and the media is simply feeding off of it. In what world is sub 20m for Rabiot a bad deal? He has good touch, good press resistance, is a fantastic ball winner and doesn't overdribble. Instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt, at United all our transfers get scrutinized if they are not seemingly unknown or young and raw. Anything after that needs to be 60m or below or we are getting swindled.
Because we're signing Rabiot from the club that got Pogba for free, so essentially we are paying them 18mil to take the player who is inferior to the one we lost for nothing. And that we are doing this so late in the transfer window.
Rabiot smacks of desperation. Everyone knows central midfield is our weakest position on the pitch and we are trying to make a player who was deemed not good enough for both PSG and Juve. We were never seriously interested in him before the loss to Brighton but now due to that, and the fact that De Jong is not looking likely, we are going after him because there isn't a lot of time left in the window. That is a definition of desperation.
The De Jong saga. How was that our fault? We did everything right in that deal yet Barca and their funny accounting made that deal impossible to break through.
I will actually come out and say part of this is our fault, especially when you see that Rabiot is considered his replacement. De Jong was never interested in coming to United, while you can say he never wanted to leave Barca there are still reports coming out he would be interested to go to Chelsea, so from very early on there should have been doubt for this deal.
There never seemed to be an alternative in our minds for central midfield, which was risky given the uncertainty on De Jong.
One thing though I will say is that we haven't seen many central midfielders move this transfer window, you have Tchouameni, Gravenberch and Philips leave but this was very early in the window and therefore difficult for United to finalize given our focus was on De Jong then. Bisouamma might be one who got away though.
We have made 3 signings, all of whom look pretty good. Yet Martinez comes in and is turned into a meme. Eriksen initially didn't get in most predicted starting xi's and all you here about is how bad we have been in the market. It's way too negative. Damned if we do, damned if we don't,both from the press, but worse from our fans.
Everything now will be called a panic buy. Yet our management is reacting to a real issue we have in the squad and trying to address at as quickly as possible. It's a new regime facing transfer issues every team faces.
Martinez can turn out to be a good signing, Malacia is a backup but Eriksen is not a good signing for me. A old player who was again deemed not good enough by Inter and had no other big club after him, if you want to play an aggressive pressing playstyle I would hardly believe you want Eriksen in midfield.
And also, lets not forget we were just trying to sign ex Stoke, 33 year old Arnautovic. That was just embarassing for the club.