De Ligt | €45+5m agreement reached pending medical | Signed!

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He seems a good defender, for that price especially, but I really thought we'd be moving away from dealing with Bayern and Madrid for players, under the new regime. There's always a reason why these clubs let go of these supposed assets. Especially to a club like United.
 
He seems a good defender, for that price especially, but I really thought we'd be moving away from dealing with Bayern and Madrid for players, under the new regime. There's always a reason why these clubs let go of these supposed assets. Especially to a club like United.

There’s always exceptions though, Kroos and Odegaard are a just a couple of examples. It’s just in our case we tend to get the shitty end of the stick most of the time. Although we did have Kroos all lined up before LvG pulled the plug, had we signed him maybe our outlook on signing players from Bayern might be different.
 
Why isn't he a starter for the Dutch? Not good enough, returning from injury, manager is a Southgate-level idiot, something else?
 
Why isn't he a starter for the Dutch? Not good enough, returning from injury, manager is a Southgate-level idiot, something else?
I'm under the impression they have an embarrassment of riches in that department (shame that can't be said for their forward line) and that De Ligt has had a mixed season due to injuries and that's the reason. The Dutch really do have some fantastic centre back options.
 
He seems a good defender, for that price especially, but I really thought we'd be moving away from dealing with Bayern and Madrid for players, under the new regime. There's always a reason why these clubs let go of these supposed assets. Especially to a club like United.
We have to judge every deal on its own. There is a difference to buy a 24 year old CB for about 40 million or a 29 year old dm, who depends a lot on his physicality for 70 million or whatever it was.

De Ligts injury record may be a concern. But looking closer to it, it doesn't seem that grim. Age is on his side, you couldn't say that of Casemiro, Varane or Schweinsteiger. I think there is a good chance, that this deal turns out much better for us.
 
Why isn't he a starter for the Dutch? Not good enough, returning from injury, manager is a Southgate-level idiot, something else?

De Vrij is also a good player and probably less mistake prone and works well with Van Dijk. You don't need to take a chance on a less experienced, less consistent player when you've got Van Dijk in the team already to do the difficult bits.
 
I don’t get what the big who harr about £42m.

He’ll be signing on reduced wages(hopefully) we accepted a bid of £30m for Maguire last summer and will probably be demanding the same again.
 
We could end up getting him for a similar price to Newcastle superstar Elliot Anderson
 
Why isn't he a starter for the Dutch? Not good enough, returning from injury, manager is a Southgate-level idiot, something else?

Van Dijk always starts, and they have a lot of very good options. Koeman is an idiot, there's that too.
 
It just doesn't add up to me that we've fought tooth and nail to get in a Sporting Director who will presumably identify top players for reasonable prices and an imaginative recruiting strategy and long-term vision that'll take us back to the top, and then for him to come in and greenlight the signing of De Ligt, the most quintessential United signing imaginable.
 
It just doesn't add up to me that we've fought tooth and nail to get in a Sporting Director who will presumably identify top players for reasonable prices and an imaginative recruiting strategy and long-term vision that'll take us back to the top, and then for him to come in and greenlight the signing of De Ligt, the most quintessential United signing imaginable.

He does not do this as part of his job and has said so plenty of times
 
Why isn't he a starter for the Dutch? Not good enough, returning from injury, manager is a Southgate-level idiot, something else?
Also:
De Vrij is very good and a former Serie A defender of the year.

It is also tactical. Dumfries will push forward and we defend with three defenders because de Vrij, Virgil and Ake form the back line. De Vrij is used to playing in a back three while de Ligt isnt at his best in a back three.
 
Why isn't he a starter for the Dutch? Not good enough, returning from injury, manager is a Southgate-level idiot, something else?
Koeman is quite stubborn and outside of his time at Feyenoord, his stint at Southampton builing off of Poch and his previous NL stint and De Ligt's previous starting spell at NL wasn't great, while De Vrij has been very solid for NL when he did. Fair to add, though, is that (captain) Van Dijk was his competition in the back three, so Timber and Geertruida were pretty much first choice at RCB, with Aké and vdVen being preferred on the left, and possibly even Blind.

Now for this tournament they moved to a Pep-ish 4 at the back with Aké more on the left, vDijk LCB and De Vrij RCB. If De Vrij is dropped De Ligt is the immediate replacement, and I think the same would be the case for Van Dijk, though there is the slim chance Aké, vdVen or even Blind would be picked there.

But it's mostly De Vrij credit's that blocks De Ligt's second chance right now.
 
Antony too.

Lisandro was too short in here for CB. Casemiro was too old (his first season he was fantastic for us).

Mount, AWB, Maguire, Sancho, Antony, Casemiro... all met with varying levels of skepticism, all that skepticism proven right.
 
Taking a thread off topic
Caf's obsession with pace is remarkable. Some people are playing Fifa way too much. And he is not even that slow, ffs.

He will be excellent signing.
 
He literally made a name for himself when he played in Ten Hags system :lol:
Which system?

To be clear I don't deny that he has a system, but ask because he did use different systems at different clubs at times. Just because de Ligt was a good fit to EtH's preferred system for Ajax at that time doesn't guarantee that he is a good fit for the system EtH intends to use now for United. He should be, otherwise it would be a stupid signing, but you can't base that on the fact that de Ligt had his breakthrough almost a decade ago at another club in another league playing a different system.
 
Yeah because he wanted to go to Madrid. De Ligt isn't coming here to fullfil a personal dream.
Nope. We wanted to extend. Kroos wanted to extend. We treated him badly during negotiations and refused to pay him the wages he deserved. Only then did he want to leave and the club had no issues letting him. Which was unfathomably stupid.
 
Not 100% convinced by him. Maybe because the few times I watch him he makes a complete howler at some point during the game.
We seem to want to play a high line and whilst he may be fast when he gets going he seems a little slow on the turn to me. Happy to be corrected if that isn't the case, just the impression I get.
As long as we don't get our pants pulled down over the price, I don't mind it, but I'm not jumping for joy.
 
So his role is different at United than it was at Newcastle and Brighton?

Sky Sports have an article here on his 'selected signings' on both clubs

https://www.skysports.com/football/...gree-deal-to-hire-newcastle-sporting-director

What am I missing

I think reading between the lines that just means that he will trust the scouts and data to do their job even if the signing is considered slightly left field.

there’s value all over the place once you’ve established what you’re trying to achieve what you need and the club is settled. De ligt is a major coup. Readymade PL player incoming. Fingers crossed we can agree with Bayern
 
There is risk with this transfer, United really need to get a good fee. Bayern want rid, it's very clear. It's the time to show proper negotiating, get the fair price. A new start could be what he needs, the amount of games he missed last year worries me. We need available players every week.
 
I think its a good deal for United but that fans need to have reasonable expectations.

De Ligt is a weird player because he was so precocious that he acquired a reputation as a player who must have a very high ceiling but it turned out that he was just a good all around CB without elite attributes, a guy who developed early, is perfectly good enough to play for a big club, but doesn't have the athletic traits or ball playing skills that would make him among the elite.

He'll absolutely improve on United's current options and I don't see that much chance that the club will look back on the deal as some kind of huge mistake in a few years. But equally there's very little reason to believe that you're buying the Toni Kroos of defenders. If he was that level player then Tuchel would not have tried to replace him last summer and handed his position to Kim to start last year, Bayern would not be selling this summer, and he'd be getting into the Dutch side ahead of players like De Vrij.
 
I think its a good deal for United but that fans need to have reasonable expectations.

De Ligt is a weird player because he was so precocious that he acquired a reputation as a player who must have a very high ceiling but it turned out that he was just a good all around CB without elite attributes, a guy who developed early, is perfectly good enough to play for a big club, but doesn't have the athletic traits or ball playing skills that would make him among the elite.

He'll absolutely improve on United's current options and I don't see that much chance that the club will look back on the deal as some kind of huge mistake in a few years. But equally there's very little reason to believe that you're buying the Toni Kroos of defenders. If he was that level player then Tuchel would not have tried to replace him last summer and handed his position to Kim to start last year, Bayern would not be selling this summer, and he'd be getting into the Dutch side ahead of players like De Vrij.

This is probably not true
 
Which system?

To be clear I don't deny that he has a system, but ask because he did use different systems at different clubs at times. Just because de Ligt was a good fit to EtH's preferred system for Ajax at that time doesn't guarantee that he is a good fit for the system EtH intends to use now for United. He should be, otherwise it would be a stupid signing, but you can't base that on the fact that de Ligt had his breakthrough almost a decade ago at another club in another league playing a different system.
Yeah you make a good point. By system i was just referring to the fact that ETH played a high line at Ajax and his lack of pace wasn’t so much of a problem. Lord knows what system ETH will play next season and if it’s the current one, then I don’t think De Ligts past knowledge of Ten Hags tactics would be much relevant
 
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