Ali Dia
Full Member
That's the thing about nurturing young talent. Ruthless is probably the polar opposite of what you should be doing if actually want to have academy superstars. Kids have fragile minds, they are inconsistent, even the most talented of them (we have the recent examples of Rashford and Greenwood). I doubt that we would have seen McTominay, Williams or Tuanzebe get more than a couple of starts before being sold if they were at Chelsea, for example. Maybe they would have had a couple of loans and then being sold without actually stepping foot wearing the United's first team jersey.
Addressing the Williams example: the thing you need to consider is what you are giving up and what you could be getting. You think there is a club that will pay £15m for him. I personally don't think so, especially in this climate, but let's ignore that. Ok, you have £15m now (if we assume we keep 100% of the transfer fee). Who do you buy that will give you better value for that money? Also, consider that Williams is on very low wages right now and every incoming RB (that can play LB too) will demand way more to begin with. They would also need to adapt and perform better because otherwise what's the point?
People talk about being ruthless but don't appear to demonstrate any business savvy. Just to illustrate: £80k/week = £320k/month = £3.84m/year = £15.36m for 4 years. And that's not even considering other costs like bonuses and other contractual clauses. Plus he is young, has potential to grow and is an academy graduate.
The kind of business acumen that has us in and out of the CL spots every second season with one of the highest wage bills in the game all while retaining almost useless players to the kind of deals they wouldn’t get anywhere else?
I’m fully aware Williams is the much cheaper option for the glazers medium term but what does he actually offer the team in that time? he doesn’t push the quality of the squad or competition for places and he doesn’t play so he doesn’t learn so the only reason he’s still here after X years is through initially cutting costs we’ve ended up missing out on much better players in his position and overpaying him relative to his actual ability and market value and we lose out longer term when no other team will match the wages with any kind of decent transfer fee.
There’s no harming the brand in selling academy players at 20. If they’ve graduated and you gave them pro contracts, worldwide exposure and a few games in the shop window. If you are selling them to a lower club that will keep playing them then you’ve absolutely done your job. I think our players would rather that than be sat like Tuanzebe or Williams stagnating (and depreciating) this season. Barca and Real sell what they don’t use to fund deals for world class potential players. They regularly sell better players than Williams and Tuanzebe will ever be. That’s the true standard we are up against at the very top of the game. We hold onto all of our players for that bit too long and give them one more deal than they deserve to cut costs.
I imagine the DOF is going to help de clutter the glut of fringe talent for lack of a better word. With the amount of players we are buying these days for youth level we are almost certainly going to have to modify our approach sooner or later.