Antony (out)

Can ETH buy him ? We paid him £15m for his severance which should suffice. Antony can play with his kids or dribble his way to the grocery store ?

We all know there's only one guy he'd blow his load on, and that's his beloved Washie.
 
I can only envision loaning him out and hoping that he does well to sell him in the summer. His book value is still so high that selling him for 20m doesn't even really help United.
Of course it would help us, and massively so. His book value (roughly 50M) is going to be amortized whether we keep him, loan him, or sell him. It's a sunk cost. All selling him changes is how many seasons it's amortized over. It'd be 50M in 1 season instead of 2.5. That's offset by the 20M sales fee though, meaning it's a 30M net hit vs about 10M in remaining amortization this season. You also save his wages though (roughly 5M the rest of the year), so total additional PSR cost is 15M for this season.

We may not be able to handle that for PSR this year, but if we can it'd mean PSR savings of ~20M (the foregone amortization + his wages) next year and the year after. It'd be quite a boon by the time we get to July and the next financial year starts.
 
Can ETH buy him ? We paid him £15m for his severance which should suffice. Antony can play with his kids or dribble his way to the grocery store ?

He wasn't a Ten Hag purchase. The club fully intended to reintegrate Greenwood back into the team, then the public backlash took over and they decided to loan out Greenwood, this was mid Aug, so now they needed to replace a player that they had planned on using. This was also after we lost to Brighton and Brentford and the club was in full panic, talking about signing players like Arnautovic, it was a mad scramble after those games until Sept 1. The club had been scouting Antony, prior to Ten Hag joining, I know this because I was tracking the player long before we signed him and there was always United links, and when they needed a right sided wide player Antony was top of the list. They presented the list to Ten Hag, is he going to say no to an additional player, one he knows well? So they agreed to sign him, then Murtough and Arnold negotiated a price which had nothing to do with Ten Hag. Who are these people in 2020s thinking the coach of a football club is in the boardroom discussing player prices? What decade are you living in?

There is plenty reason to smackdown Ten Hag, Antony is not one, he was just another feck up by the Glazers/Arnold/Murtough.

EDIT*** (since I can't reply until tomorrow)
Roboc7 you are absolutely correct, I went back to the article about the interview Ten Hag gave and it I had my timelines all screwed up, I read the article in the summer. The essence is the same though, the club wanted to use Greenwood, couldn't, went to their scouting list, of which Antony was top, ran it by Ten Hag, obviously he's going to agree to using a player he knows, and the club signed him.
 
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Of course it would help us, and massively so. His book value (roughly 50M) is going to be amortized whether we keep him, loan him, or sell him. It's a sunk cost. All selling him changes is how many seasons it's amortized over. It'd be 50M in 1 season instead of 2.5. That's offset by the 20M sales fee though, meaning it's a 30M net hit vs about 10M in remaining amortization this season. You also save his wages though (roughly 5M the rest of the year), so total additional PSR cost is 15M for this season.

We may not be able to handle that for PSR this year, but if we can it'd mean PSR savings of ~20M (the foregone amortization + his wages) next year and the year after. It'd be quite a boon by the time we get to July and the next financial year starts.

I’d be surprised if we could absorb that hit this season and I think it’s unlikely we’d get 20m for him so it’s likely an even bigger loss.

It’s an important point though and highlights another disadvantage to PSR being so tight all the time. We effectively get stuck with these players because we don’t have the flexibility to get rid, it’s the only reason Antony is still here.

I’d say the most likely time to sell him is in 18 months but maybe there is a chance it’s earlier if we can sell of Casemiro without a loss or Rashford a decent fee.
 
He wasn't a Ten Hag purchase. The club fully intended to reintegrate Greenwood back into the team, then the public backlash took over and they decided to loan out Greenwood, this was mid Aug, so now they needed to replace a player that they had planned on using. This was also after we lost to Brighton and Brentford and the club was in full panic, talking about signing players like Arnautovic, it was a mad scramble after those games until Sept 1. The club had been scouting Antony, prior to Ten Hag joining, I know this because I was tracking the player long before we signed him and there was always United links, and when they needed a right sided wide player Antony was top of the list. They presented the list to Ten Hag, is he going to say no to an additional player, one he knows well? So they agreed to sign him, then Murtough and Arnold negotiated a price which had nothing to do with Ten Hag. Who are these people in 2020s thinking the coach of a football club is in the boardroom discussing player prices? What decade are you living in?

There is plenty reason to smackdown Ten Hag, Antony is not one, he was just another feck up by the Glazers/Arnold/Murtough.

Antony joined in 2022. Greenwood's charges were dropped 6 months later in the beginning of 2023. They planned to bring him back at the beginning of last season.
 
Just don’t understand why we persist on playing him on his unnatural side. Just has to be an improvement doing a job covering lw. We really do the weirdest things, even without ETH.

the 90s called they want their tactics back
 
I think he can do better than Olympiakos tbh.

I feel like Italy is such an open ended league these days that he will have plenty of time to find space, cut in and shoot.

He can regenerate his career like Pulisic.
 
Of course it would help us, and massively so. His book value (roughly 50M) is going to be amortized whether we keep him, loan him, or sell him. It's a sunk cost. All selling him changes is how many seasons it's amortized over. It'd be 50M in 1 season instead of 2.5. That's offset by the 20M sales fee though, meaning it's a 30M net hit vs about 10M in remaining amortization this season. You also save his wages though (roughly 5M the rest of the year), so total additional PSR cost is 15M for this season.

We may not be able to handle that for PSR this year, but if we can it'd mean PSR savings of ~20M (the foregone amortization + his wages) next year and the year after. It'd be quite a boon by the time we get to July and the next financial year starts.
Correct on the accounting. I don't think we can handle the PSR impact this year but if we can get him off the books in the summer (or even do a loan with obligation this month), we should do it.
 
Almost not worth selling - wait until summer, hopefully he gets some games at WB and does ok and then his stock rises even a little.
 
He wasn't a Ten Hag purchase. The club fully intended to reintegrate Greenwood back into the team, then the public backlash took over and they decided to loan out Greenwood, this was mid Aug, so now they needed to replace a player that they had planned on using. This was also after we lost to Brighton and Brentford and the club was in full panic, talking about signing players like Arnautovic, it was a mad scramble after those games until Sept 1. The club had been scouting Antony, prior to Ten Hag joining, I know this because I was tracking the player long before we signed him and there was always United links, and when they needed a right sided wide player Antony was top of the list. They presented the list to Ten Hag, is he going to say no to an additional player, one he knows well? So they agreed to sign him, then Murtough and Arnold negotiated a price which had nothing to do with Ten Hag. Who are these people in 2020s thinking the coach of a football club is in the boardroom discussing player prices? What decade are you living in?

There is plenty reason to smackdown Ten Hag, Antony is not one, he was just another feck up by the Glazers/Arnold/Murtough.

EDIT*** (since I can't reply until tomorrow)
Roboc7 you are absolutely correct, I went back to the article about the interview Ten Hag gave and it I had my timelines all screwed up, I read the article in the summer. The essence is the same though, the club wanted to use Greenwood, couldn't, went to their scouting list, of which Antony was top, ran it by Ten Hag, obviously he's going to agree to using a player he knows, and the club signed him.
Where did I say anything about Ten Haag discussing prices for Antony ? Please try to read properly before throwing out insults.

I believe ETH was responsible for Antony signing as he was for Licha. I think your Greenwood story is just your uninformed speculation.
 
Of course it would help us, and massively so. His book value (roughly 50M) is going to be amortized whether we keep him, loan him, or sell him. It's a sunk cost. All selling him changes is how many seasons it's amortized over. It'd be 50M in 1 season instead of 2.5. That's offset by the 20M sales fee though, meaning it's a 30M net hit vs about 10M in remaining amortization this season. You also save his wages though (roughly 5M the rest of the year), so total additional PSR cost is 15M for this season.

We may not be able to handle that for PSR this year, but if we can it'd mean PSR savings of ~20M (the foregone amortization + his wages) next year and the year after. It'd be quite a boon by the time we get to July and the next financial year starts.
I know how it works. I actually work in finance.
The bolded (where you agree with me) is what I meant. The FFP hit would be immediately and therefore the 20m wouldn’t be enough.
 
Where did I say anything about Ten Haag discussing prices for Antony ? Please try to read properly before throwing out insults.

I believe ETH was responsible for Antony signing as he was for Licha. I think your Greenwood story is just your uninformed speculation.
My response to you was more of a generic response to everyone making the argument Ten Hag made the purchase.


It's not my story, this information was taken from an interview in the Netherlands with Ten Hag in the summer.


“When Mason Greenwood had problems, something had to be done, someone had to be bought.

“The number one on the scouts' list was Antony. He stood out in almost all of Ajax's Champions League matches, it wasn't a crazy choice.”


He said Sancho could play on the right, but was naturally more suited to the left, Greenwood seemed like the likely candidate for the right, but now wasn't an option.
 
I know how it works. I actually work in finance.
The bolded (where you agree with me) is what I meant. The FFP hit would be immediately and therefore the 20m wouldn’t be enough.
Loan with an obligation to buy the player on July 1 would mostly solve that problem. Yes, we'd still have a modest PSR hit to deal with in the next accounting period, but we'd have a whole year to figure out how to fix it.
 
He wasn't a Ten Hag purchase. The club fully intended to reintegrate Greenwood back into the team, then the public backlash took over and they decided to loan out Greenwood, this was mid Aug, so now they needed to replace a player that they had planned on using. This was also after we lost to Brighton and Brentford and the club was in full panic, talking about signing players like Arnautovic, it was a mad scramble after those games until Sept 1. The club had been scouting Antony, prior to Ten Hag joining, I know this because I was tracking the player long before we signed him and there was always United links, and when they needed a right sided wide player Antony was top of the list. They presented the list to Ten Hag, is he going to say no to an additional player, one he knows well? So they agreed to sign him, then Murtough and Arnold negotiated a price which had nothing to do with Ten Hag. Who are these people in 2020s thinking the coach of a football club is in the boardroom discussing player prices? What decade are you living in?

There is plenty reason to smackdown Ten Hag, Antony is not one, he was just another feck up by the Glazers/Arnold/Murtough.

EDIT*** (since I can't reply until tomorrow)
Roboc7 you are absolutely correct, I went back to the article about the interview Ten Hag gave and it I had my timelines all screwed up, I read the article in the summer. The essence is the same though, the club wanted to use Greenwood, couldn't, went to their scouting list, of which Antony was top, ran it by Ten Hag, obviously he's going to agree to using a player he knows, and the club signed him.
There were reports from some journalists that our scouting team had deep reservations about Antony as he was so one footed and limited on pace. He was bought at the insistance of ETH. That's why Utd went so high as ETH really wanted him. ETH backtracking after he flopped at Utd isn't hard to believe.

Not for one second do I believe he was high on our list for the right wing position.
 
There were reports from some journalists that our scouting team had deep reservations about Antony as he was so one footed and limited on pace. He was bought at the insistance of ETH. That's why Utd went so high as ETH really wanted him. ETH backtracking after he flopped at Utd isn't hard to believe.

Not for one second do I believe he was high on our list for the right wing position.
In 3 years, Ten Hag said everything and its opposite, so, take his word with a grain of salt.

But Antony was in several high profile lists, since his exploding season in Sao Paulo, aged 19.

Both him and Hojlund were a second sell, even so young, with a percentage to former clubs. So, with the agent part, there is a lot of room for "unscripted moves".

Im quite sure that Atalanta and Ajax haven't received more than half of the
pounds spent.