This pursuit all seems a bit... reactionary? I get there being opportunities that arise in the market that you should take a look at, but this all screams of what we've been doing over the past 10 seasons and not this new thoughtful, considered transfer strategy we've been promised.
De Ligt | €45+5m agreement reached pending medical | Signed!
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You don’t at all. You need to be alongside someone who does.
You need pace and recovery pace for a high line. Maguire has neither.
So he had an injury last season. Look at the previous two seasons before that he missed massively fewer games than Varane. People love to twist stats to suit negative agenda.
I work alongside a German company based near Munich and a lot of the contacts there are Bayern fans, and they all rated him highly, even before our interest.
Not even close. 19/20 he was quite inconsistent, with some periods of being very good and some periods of being poor. Overall he was 'good' at best, and I'd make an argument that he was no better than 'ok' and no better than Lindelof that season (Maguire's good periods were better, but his bad periods were worse). Then he started 20/21 terribly for the first couple of months (likely due to what happened in Greece) before then going back to his ok form of the previous season for another few months. It was then only the second half of 20/21 where you could get away with describing him as 'immense', which was easily the best form of his career.
While I don't think Maguire is as incapable of playing in a high line as some make out, I'd hardly describe him as being absolutely suited either. He has clear weaknesses for that style, and while they can be compensated to some extent by his teammates they will always be a weakness.
They think he's not worth the money he's on, same reason Juve fecked him off.
With Varane gone, you have room on the wage bill for a this very good player.
That’d be concerning with Martinez playing next to him
Walker does the sweeping in City’s high line. No reason we can’t get a lightening quick fullback doing it for us.
If we can find someone like Walker, great but you’d probably struggle to find another player that is as effective as him in this aspect of the game. And, even if we managed to find an equivalent of Walker, this is still a huge risk when we have no other defenders that can bridge this gap.
Additionally, RB shouldn’t be anywhere near our priority list, at least not first choice signing to replace Dalot in the team. If AWB goes, we should just get someone cheap.
I find it really funny how little time people take to do research on very simple matters. Deligt was sold because Juve were in a financial pickle, he was a high earner with two years left on his contact and had made it known that he had no plans to renew so rather than sell him for cheap when he had only one year left in his contract, they sold him to Bayern. Nothing to do with his performance. Bremer is a better pure defender than him but overall much worse on the ball. It's similar to the Smalling - Evans situation where Smalling was a better defender but Evans was much better better on the ball.
The reason also city gets away with it is because of their possession. Few times they need walker’s pace to bail them out. With us it won’t given how many times teams run at our defence. We would need to put a fullback as the last man at all times and that would nullify our attack considering how dependent we are on our fullbacks in ten hag system.
I'm sorry but this is quite silly, and very made up.
Arteta brought in Miguel Molina, Carlos Cuesta and Inaci Cana among others. Pep had Juanma Lillo and Inigo Dominguez, and also Enzo Maresca. There's literally nothing "old school" about Ten Hag having his backroom staff.
You've come across so lazy in your narrative with a "blargh is dutch yes? Must be a Ten Hag push this is power play!". At least try to put some thought into it.
By the way, the Ibiza story was first leaked by Athletic, who also spoke about Ratcliffe trying to sign Tuchel. Ten Hag also verified that the club went to speak to other managers, so it must be a weird power play if he's open enough to admit his job was massively on the ropes where they went to look for replacements. He's about to sign a contract that will likely have reduced influence on recruitment. There is no power play here. RvN is a good coach as evidenced by his debut year with PSV. He probably tried management too early, but he's an ex player, was a world class striker and knows the club too. If RvN came in under Tuchel no one bats an eye lid. But because it's Ten Hag we have posters literally making shit up. It's so tiresome.
I actually follow the Serie A and had been doing so for more then 3 decades. But ok
So tell us, what's the excuse behind former 'Juventus superstar' now 'Bayern's best CB' being sold for cheaper this time round?
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If there's even a hint that he's injury prone or has had a series of injuries, then I'm not interested. Don't care who they are. I want players who are actually available to play games.
To be fair this is my only worry. I don't think he can keep fit, and wonder if Bayern are cashing in for this reason.
Look mate if you think that bringing two other Dutch coaches + potentially 3 other Dutch players or with Eredivisie experience is not an extension to last 2 year's strategy then I rest my case.
If you think bringing in coaches the manager is comfortable with is some sort of power play then I rest mine. Athletic have reported INEOS presented De Ligt as an option to Ten Hag and I'd happily trust them over your made up theory.
Looks like the task/goal it to find the best CB available for around 45 million.
Something we should take into account when judging these targets. I'm fairly confident as well that INEOS won't be giving out crazy salaries.
*Does every thread have to turn into slagging off the manager
Something we should take into account when judging these targets. I'm fairly confident as well that INEOS won't be giving out crazy salaries.
*Does every thread have to turn into slagging off the manager
He missed 20 Bayern games due to injury in 23/24. Good player but valid concerns over injuries
Valid point. One thing our signings* (and most of our targets) collectively lack recently is raw athleticism and pace to go along with the technical ability. De Ligt may not be lumberingly slow, but he falls into the category of another not particularly fast player.
Ball always moves faster than the player granted, but looking at our squad profiles I see no significant pace anywhere. Last time we had any significant pace was Ole era with pre-injury front three of Marcus-Martial-Mason (with Fernandes playing like a proper no.10).
* Rasmus is pretty nippy, to be fair to him. But he’s normally too occupied wrestling to utilise it down the wings.
Rashford, Garnacho and Rasmus are all lighting fast.
Rashford isn’t the same as he was. Garnacho is alright. The acceleration is there but he’s not truly a sprinter. The best thing about him with his running style is that he stays really wide to allow himself more space. I certainly wouldn’t put him down as one of the fastest players in the league or anything, to warrant a “lighting fast” description. Already commented on Rasmus in my edit.
Its the same Athletic who hyped Murtough in 2022 and then wrote an absolute hit piece on him a year later mere 5 months before he was shown the door. For god sake who do you think feeds the Athletic information? Why are they so reliable? Its the club. 'Sticking to ETH's principles because all our decision makers are on gardening leave' is hardly something INEOS would want the Athletic to say
A- ETH has a veto on transfers inserted in his contract. That contract still stands to this very day
B- We made the world know that we wanted to replace ETH
C- We failed and INEOS had to personally go to Ibiza and beg him to stay
D- We're trying to sign every person with Eredivisie experience there is which is in line to everything we've done prior to INEOS arrival and since ETH joined
Some common sense please!
Does it make sense to stick to the current system up until they start working at the club? Sort off. I trust ETH more then I trust bicycle man but I'd expect Wilcox to at least highlight the very evident issues surrounding De Ligt. Will such a thing probably change in the future? I believe so. Berrada and Ashworth will join the club eventually and they won't stand to a cheer leading role. But its very rare that something that moves, swims and quack like a duck turned out to be an F16
Injury frequency can be up overcome. Look at Robben when he went to Bayern. Nowhere injured as much as when at Chelsea.
Or Juventus fixing a stomach issue with Evra that out medical department missed and he managed to extend his playing career.
But with us having one of the worst injury records in PL, it's more likely he will be injured even more with us. Utd are trying to address the frequency of injuries issues at the club. But it's a risk. Good player though.
Feel like we would need a player injured a negative amount of the time just to get a proper full season out of him the way we deal with layoffs.
De Ligt in form can be a fantastic player. That doesn't mean he would be a great signing. We got to consider that Bundesliga is a much less physical league than the EPL and we've seen many players who moved from Germany to England struggling in recent years (fast payers like Van de Ven, Bailey or Haaland obviously have no issues and there are exceptions for midfielders like Pascal Gross or de Bruyne). Posters saying he is injury prone don't mean he has big injuries like Varane that makes him miss half of the season. De Ligt always had problems with little knocks and misses important games (a bit like Maguire and McTominay last season, but he is worse in that regard). This will be really annoying. His lack of pace (he is the slowest CB of Bayern), is another concern, especially since Martinez isn't the fastest either. If we play with a high line, which seems the plan, we still lack recovery speed and would get exposed to fast counters against teams like Aston Villa or Wolves. Although De Ligt would compensate Licha's aerial deficites, I don't think he is a good partner for him imo. Bayern fans rate him highly, because in their league and their team he has the potential to be the outstanding defender. And of course they would get disappointed to see him leave. But we should really consider those factors when we sign him. If he is available for 40m, I wouldn't mind as he is still better than all of our CBs bar Martinez, but we should set our expectations a bit lower.
Huge wages, injury prone, been on a steady decline now for a few years and his dad’s fat.. pass.
Yes he was. It is just that is Bayern so dominant in BL they barely miss him against most teams.
https://www.transfermarkt.com/arjen-robben/verletzungen/spieler/4360
You think we can afford to spend £100-120m on centrebacks this summer?
So this confirms that nothing hasn't changed, still targeting players that demand high fees, high wages, injury prone and are shite. There is a fecking reason why Juve got rid of him and now Bayern want rid of him.
If you follow Seria A as well as you claim, then you know Deligt's first season at Juventus was one to forget. He kept making silly errors because he was trying the man to man marking that he was suited to at Ajax while at Juve he was tasked with being more positionally aware in a zonal marking system. This led to him overcommitting and making alot of errors and he even scored quite number of own goals. By the end of his second season there he had improved and ironed out those mistakes and becoming a more well rounded defender. I'm not going to repeat myself on why he left Juventus for Bayern because I've already stated it in my previous post.
Bayern are looking to sell because Khan and Co. Gave him high wages ( similar to Sane, and Gnabry) and the new board are trying to trim the wage bill. Take a few minutes of your time to check the Bayern fans forum and it's pretty unanimous that the fanbase are not happy about him being put up for sale while Upa is still being allowed to stay. Bayern fans actually tipped him to be their next Captain. That's how highly they regard him. I don't know why exactly the board want's to sell him but everybody's best guess is that they feel he the most sellable asset and with Tah (another very good defender) pushing to sign on the cheap, the drop in quality won't be big enough to offset the potential financial gain.
That's a very elegant way to justify his constant urge to touch the ball with his hands and scoring own goals. I agree that he improved afterwards but certainly not to the extent of his 10m euros a year salary which was the reason why he was sold. Regarding Juventus 'not being ambitious' enough' or 'needing money'. that's an accusation that any old fart who follow the Serie A for decades like myself had got used concerning those slippery lot. The first I witness this was when they sold Roby Baggio to Milan back in 1995 although I am pretty sure its far older then that. Most of the time it turns out that Juventus had already a very decent replacement for the player (back then Del Piero in De Ligt case, Bremer) who is cheaper and would end up doing better at Juventus then the departing player will do elsewhere. Bremer might not be as silky as De Ligt is but he doesn't dabble in hand ball. Jokes aside Juventus did got their finger burnt on this one. They sold him for less money that they bought him which is a rare thing for them and a red flag to be considered.
And it seems to me that Bayern came to the same conclusion as Juventus did ie there are excellent players around on a cheaper salary. I dare to say that De Ligt injury record this season scared them which is fair enough really. No one likes to have a 250k a week player spending a big chunk of the season in the treatment room. Which is why, once again, De Ligt is set to move for a cheaper fee bought again. Those are two other red flags.
Despite all these red flags I am not completely against this signing but we need to be smart about it. If Bayern are desperate to sell then let's loan him with an option to buy and with Bayern covering some of his salary. If that ain't possible then we might considering doing what Juve and Bayern did and find cheaper and equally good options
I checked what italians said when De Ligt was close to leaving. Back then we and Chelsea were mentioned
https://www.corrieredellosport.it/n...iciale_douglas_luiz_tutti_i_dettagli?infinite
"Da tifoso juventino se lo pagano 80-100 milioni glielo porto io in braccio!!! Giocatore veramente sopravvalutato e in area "se dovrebbe taglia' le mani", detto alla romana"
As a Juventus fan if they pay 80-100m euros then I'll carry him myself. He's extremely overrated and they should sell him off
" La Juve si becchi un bel centone e lo lasci andare prima che anche gli altri si accorgano che serve a poco."
Juve get a huge fee and please let him go before they notice how useless he is
" Vendere immediatamente senza se e senza ma. Uno degli errori più grandi di questa dirigenza"
Sell him immediately no ifs and no buts. He's one of this administration biggest mistakes
" l'inghilerra è piena di dementi, soprattutto di allenatori olandesi che stravedono x questa pippa "
England is filled with idiots especially for Dutch managers who overrate this shit player
"Buon giocatore ma enormemente sopravvalutato,120 diviso 2 = 60 ecco quanto vale
Per non parlare dell'ingaggio, 8 milioni più bonus
Poi si lamentano assurdi....
Daje pasqui."
"
He's a decent player but he's incredibly overrated. He's 60m euros at best. He's also paid too much (8m + bonus)
Yes but then fans will be making threads about injury tables and how its screwed United over and how they've been "unlucky"
It's no rocket science you sign players with questionable injury history you get shafted in a season.
Arsenal suffered with this for years signing crocks till now
Yeah but most on here will ignore that and just brand him a slow coach who will demand high wages
He needs a new place to flop, so it makes sense to join a club with already so many flops.
Yet they are still selling him for less money that they bought him up. That's the second time it happens. Would we do that to prime Rio or Vidic?
I really don’t think that’s true. He was injured all the time for us.
Reading their forum it doesnt seems like that's the case.
Kerkez or Gutierrez as would be unfair to throw Amass in and Shaw fitness is concerning
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