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

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lysglimt said:
So - just so I understand the criticism against De Ligt.....

De Ligt was a flop at Juventus
He played regularly all 3 seasons - and averaged 29 league matches a season
During those 3 seasons he won the league once - and Juventus had 2nd, 2nd and 4th best defensive record (just 6 goals worse than the best team) in those 3 seasons

De Ligt was a flop at Bayern
Despite playing 31 out of 34 games the first season and winning the league
Oh and Bayern had the best defensive record

De Ligt lost his place to Dier this season, because he was bad (despite Dier only playing 2 matches more than De Ligt when they were both at the club)
He is injury-prone - because he missed 12 league matches in the last season - mostly because of an operation of a dislocated shoulder. He played 19 games in 5 months after returning from the operation
Despite being injury-prone and apparently crap since he lost his place to Dier - he played 22 out of 34 league matches for Bayern last season. Not bad if you are injury-prone and crap.

Did that sum it up ? :)
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Please don’t post easily read and understood facts. People don’t like it as it makes their commenting with thinking look a bit silly
 
izak said:
He is considered a flopped at Juve, Bayern are interested in selling him because they need money for Olise, not to mention his injury record plus the fact he's not that much of a good defender.

We are being fleed here, three years from now we'll be looking at this wondering how stupid we were to even take the bait, a loan with a 25m obligation to buy sounds fair.
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In what way?
 
You’d think we are signing Titus bramble the way some posters are talking about De ligt. Flop at Juve, flop at Bayern, injury prone, can’t head, can’t run, can’t turn. Even after being told by Bayern fans that they are wrong, they are having none of it. :lol:
 
lysglimt said:
So - just so I understand the criticism against De Ligt.....

De Ligt was a flop at Juventus
He played regularly all 3 seasons - and averaged 29 league matches a season
During those 3 seasons he won the league once - and Juventus had 2nd, 2nd and 4th best defensive record (just 6 goals worse than the best team) in those 3 seasons

De Ligt was a flop at Bayern
Despite playing 31 out of 34 games the first season and winning the league
Oh and Bayern had the best defensive record

De Ligt lost his place to Dier this season, because he was bad (despite Dier only playing 2 matches more than De Ligt when they were both at the club)
He is injury-prone - because he missed 12 league matches in the last season - mostly because of an operation of a dislocated shoulder. He played 19 games in 5 months after returning from the operation
Despite being injury-prone and apparently crap since he lost his place to Dier - he played 22 out of 34 league matches for Bayern last season. Not bad if you are injury-prone and crap.

Did that sum it up ? :)
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You forgot "he is slow" issue. Good luck explaining that. You can show 100 clips where he shows decent mobility and speed and still he will be Maguire slow.
 
gormless said:
Bizarrely the Muppetiers Twitter definitely has some form of source (even if its just to say that there is some news coming in the next twenty minutes as happened with the takeover saga). Not to be confused with the Muppetiers Reddit which was a bunch of chancers.
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They are same people. They just moved to discord and became smart on how they present news. Everything has plausible deniability and if you take all possible names over a period of time, something will eventually stick.

Getting announcement before it was posted was due to their source being some intern handling social media account. That can hardly be called a source for anything concrete.
 
Adnan said:
I don't think that will be a issue with de Ligt and Martinez because both CBs will step up and even a single midfielder won't be alone in central areas because the CBs stepping up will allow one of the fullbacks to come into midfield to occupy a space which I believe will be vacated by Kobbie Mainoo.

Being proactive in your approach is important imo and defending from the front with a higher press has to be the go to strategy if we want to be a more proactive team. And just the CBs being more assertive in their actions out of possession will make things simple for the fullbacks who will then know when to stay and when to go. So I am bit concerned with de Ligt's injury record in the last season but him and Martinez will defend proactively and both are players are also progressive in their passing. Diogo Dalot said it best last season in the quoted post below.
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I don't have issues with the players, my biggest question mark is ETH's ability to actually get the team playing in a way beyond a mid-low block, man marking and throwing players forward to press and counter press. I.e All things that have produced our best football in the past two seasons but are ultimately quite simple in nature and pragmatic. Don't get me wrong, I'll 'settle' for this as with our quality of players, this can still produce (in theory) good results and is quite a stable way of playing similar to the first season. However, I wouldn't expect high line, super aggressive counter pressing and ball domination because I will only believe it when I see it.

I'm not unhappy at retaining ETH because I like a lot of the things he says and his general 'getting the club' vibes and conduct. The problem is that his talking and philosophy of principals pre/post match are clearer than what we've seen on the pitch for two seasons.

Acrobat7 said:
In my opinion Kim and Upa have higher potential. But they either give you a 2/10 or a 9/10 performance. De Ligt is always between 6/10 and 8/10. Maybe Kompany thinks he can get those brain farts out of them. He might play a different system, too. Bayern has a lot of CBs (or players that can play there): Kim, Upa, Dier, Ito, Stanisic, de Ligt and is allegedly looking to bring in Tah. De Ligt is the highest paid one and can generate a good fee. Enter United…
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I'm assuming this is because Kim and Upa have a better athletic profile? E.g Can shut down players 1 vs 1, can play on their own in a high line and close down channel runs more easier, along with perhaps better ball carrying potential?

What do you think are de Ligt's biggest weaknesses?
 
lysglimt said:
So - just so I understand the criticism against De Ligt.....

De Ligt was a flop at Juventus
He played regularly all 3 seasons - and averaged 29 league matches a season
During those 3 seasons he won the league once - and Juventus had 2nd, 2nd and 4th best defensive record (just 6 goals worse than the best team) in those 3 seasons

De Ligt was a flop at Bayern
Despite playing 31 out of 34 games the first season and winning the league
Oh and Bayern had the best defensive record

De Ligt lost his place to Dier this season, because he was bad (despite Dier only playing 2 matches more than De Ligt when they were both at the club)
He is injury-prone - because he missed 12 league matches in the last season - mostly because of an operation of a dislocated shoulder. He played 19 games in 5 months after returning from the operation
Despite being injury-prone and apparently crap since he lost his place to Dier - he played 22 out of 34 league matches for Bayern last season. Not bad if you are injury-prone and crap.

Did that sum it up ? :)
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I like him, but let’s add a bit of context to last season. He missed 20 games due to injury. Its ok to be cautious considering our history
 
golden_blunder said:
I think it was ligament issues. Anyway, there’s a difference between “he missed 12 league games” and 20 games his missed due to injury. It gives full context
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Well - he struggled in the first half of the season, but he barely missed a match after december
 
lysglimt said:
So - just so I understand the criticism against De Ligt.....

De Ligt was a flop at Juventus
He played regularly all 3 seasons - and averaged 29 league matches a season
During those 3 seasons he won the league once - and Juventus had 2nd, 2nd and 4th best defensive record (just 6 goals worse than the best team) in those 3 seasons

De Ligt was a flop at Bayern
Despite playing 31 out of 34 games the first season and winning the league
Oh and Bayern had the best defensive record

De Ligt lost his place to Dier this season, because he was bad (despite Dier only playing 2 matches more than De Ligt when they were both at the club)
He is injury-prone - because he missed 12 league matches in the last season - mostly because of an operation of a dislocated shoulder. He played 19 games in 5 months after returning from the operation
Despite being injury-prone and apparently crap since he lost his place to Dier - he played 22 out of 34 league matches for Bayern last season. Not bad if you are injury-prone and crap.

Did that sum it up ? :)
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Well, that's also quite some narrative here. Nobody doubts that De Ligt is a good player but...

- With regards to his time at Juve:

He was very young when they bought him, and still very far from the age when defenders usually 'prime'. Despite still having 2 years on his contract, they accepted a fee significantly lower than they had paid for him 3 years ago. That's very unusual for a player that young and this alone should show you that it was widely accepted at that time that he had not fully lived up to his potential - which logically reflected in the price. I remember the transfer quite well, and it was definitely not comparable to e.g. the Kane saga. I believe Juve was quite happy with the money they got back from the transfer despite selling for a loss.

- With regards to his time at Bayern:

The club expected him to become the leader of the defense and help Bayern reduce the number of goals received. Now, the year before they signed him, Bayern got 37 goals against them, first year with him onboard we got 38 goals, and the last season we got 45 goals against us. Fair to say that the club did not get out of the transfer what they were hoping for...

Bayern does not define themselves as a selling club and it's not a case of De Ligt proactively looking for a way out, so I can guarantee you that if the board would think that the team will be weaker without De Ligt, they would not consider selling him. They simply think they can get the same quality for much cheaper. That does not make De Ligt a bad player, but it indicates that the board considers his price performance ratio horrible, and that's all that is.

The board will happily approve a much higher salary to e.g. Musiala, as they know that he will be a difference maker. That is simply not true for De Ligt, as you can easily tell from looking at the stats. It's funny that you left out last year's defensive record and did also not include how we did before signing De Ligt. We won the championship more than ten years in a row, obviously we had the best defensive record in most of those years. The issue is, that it got not better with De Ligt but worse.

For me De Ligt will become the Morata or Lukaku of defenders... somehow always manages to get clubs to sign him for huge wages, yet never fully delivers what they are hoping for, and then moves on after a couple of years...
 
Despite the mixed reviews in the thread I’m excited about this signing and hope we get it done! I haven’t followed him in recent years and am basing that purely on his Ajax days, I really wanted us to go in for him when he went to Juventus, so admittedly it’s an outdated opinion.

Im sure it’s been discussed but why isn’t he in the Dutch side in the euros?
 
M Bison said:
Despite the mixed reviews in the thread I’m excited about this signing and hope we get it done! I haven’t followed him in recent years and am basing that purely on his Ajax days, I really wanted us to go in for him when he went to Juventus, so admittedly it’s an outdated opinion.

Im sure it’s been discussed but why isn’t he in the Dutch side in the euros?
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Think it's a combination of having an injury hit season and also the Dutch are ridiculously strong in that position.
 
I’m excited thinking about him Martinez and Dalot, 3 leaders in the back 4 with big energy

be nice to get Brainthwaite too for cover at LB and LCB
 
kaku06 said:
You’d think we are signing Titus bramble the way some posters are talking about De ligt. Flop at Juve, flop at Bayern, injury prone, can’t head, can’t run, can’t turn. Even after being told by Bayern fans that they are wrong, they are having none of it. :lol:
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Honestly why should we believe them?

For 45m and mostly 250k a week it doesn't smell good deal.
 
I really wanted us to go for him instead of maguire as we surely had the cash required (assuming he would have been to such a move back then) but with hindsight at hand it's perhaps for the best, can't imagine the past 6 years would have been conducive to any young player's development.
 
krazyrobus said:
Simply because it's Bayern selling, I don't want.
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Exactly my thoughts, big clubs don't sell good players, there must be something about him that's really bad.
 
If it’s a 42m fee it’s a good deal in this market. His wages are on high side but I feel we have saved a good chunk of money on the transfer fee when compared to someone like Branthwait who’s costing us 70m+.
 
izak said:
Exactly my thoughts, big clubs don't sell good players, there must be something about him that's really bad.
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That’s been on my mind as well. The reasoning could be they are trying to sign Tah and De Ligt’s massive wages are an issue if he’s not a guaranteed starter but yeah usually good clubs don’t sell their better players
 
So he's not as slow as some people make out
He's not as injury prone as some people seem to make out

If he was linked to City, Liverpool or Arsenal, I think people would be asking why we weren't interested
 
golden_blunder said:
Well like I said it’s a completely slanted context because you omitted 8 games that he missed due to injury
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No I said - he played 22 league matches out of 34. Clearly - if you miss 12 league matches, you will also miss a few cup-games.
 
lysglimt said:
No I said - he played 22 league matches out of 34. Clearly - if you miss 12 league matches, you will also miss a few cup-games.
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Not telling the whole story though fella. Maybe he doesn’t play cup games. But he does because he missed a significant number.

20 games missed
 
Always really liked him but (perhaps wrongly reading through this thread) assumed he was a bit of a crock. Perhaps not.

Still young but lots of experience and a good leader. De Ligt + a younger talent like Branthwaite, Todibo, Yoro would be perfect (but none are looking likely)... what about one of the CBs in Portugal that are highly rated. Inacio, Silva, Diomande etc.
 
criticalanalysis said:
I don't have issues with the players, my biggest question mark is ETH's ability to actually get the team playing in a way beyond a mid-low block, man marking and throwing players forward to press and counter press. I.e All things that have produced our best football in the past two seasons but are ultimately quite simple in nature and pragmatic. Don't get me wrong, I'll 'settle' for this as with our quality of players, this can still produce (in theory) good results and is quite a stable way of playing similar to the first season. However, I wouldn't expect high line, super aggressive counter pressing and ball domination because I will only believe it when I see it.

I'm not unhappy at retaining ETH because I like a lot of the things he says and his general 'getting the club' vibes and conduct. The problem is that his talking and philosophy of principals pre/post match are clearer than what we've seen on the pitch for two seasons.
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I don't think it's difficult to implement a higher defensive line as long as you have the correct profile of players in the deeper positions who look to defend proactively on the front foot. Man Utd haven't been able to do that, but ten Hag has shown that he can get it working at Ajax in the Champions league. I think we will see a more proactive Man Utd in the new season because you can't carry on playing with passive players at the back and expect to implement a higher press. Being more assertive in your actions from the back will close off the space and create the conditions to play in the opponent's half.

I think your correct in saying that you want to see it to believe it, but I think that will happen because I don't believe it's difficult with the correct profile of players and de Ligt would be a step in the right direction in that regard.
 
izak said:
Exactly my thoughts, big clubs don't sell good players, there must be something about him that's really bad.
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What is this rancid logic? Bayern sold kroos, Madrid sold theo Hernandez, Robben, Sneijder, Ozil etc. Barca sold Sanchez, Ibra, Eto’o, Thiago, Fabregas etc. Every big club sometimes sell good players.
 
Blood Mage said:
Yeah because he wanted to go to Madrid. De Ligt isn't coming here to fullfil a personal dream.
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He wanted to go to David Moyes actually, let’s be completely honest here. He only went to Madrid when we stalled on him.

So yeah, Bayern were selling Kroos to us, and then to Madrid.

Madrid sold Robben, Sneijder, we sold Stam, Ruud, Chelsea KDB & Salah. City recently sold Palmer. There’s absolutely tonnes of examples in fairness.
 
izak said:
Honestly why should we believe them?

For 45m and mostly 250k a week it doesn't smell good deal.
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Who should you believe then? People who haven’t seen him more than 5 times or who don’t know what they are talking about? Either you think the Bayern posters here have some sinister agenda to sell de ligt and are lying or you think they are absolutely clueless. Other than that why shouldn’t we believe them?
 
gormless said:
Bizarrely the Muppetiers Twitter definitely has some form of source (even if its just to say that there is some news coming in the next twenty minutes as happened with the takeover saga). Not to be confused with the Muppetiers Reddit which was a bunch of chancers.
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Yeah the twitter isn't like a tier 1 source but they're decent enough. He mentioned the meeting United had in Monaco or wherever and that was mentioned in the Athletic article and there have been other things.
 
Aren’t they possibly selling Davies to Madrid? I wonder if Madrid are also getting ripped off there.
 
arthurka said:
Owen Hargreaves or Schweinsteiger does that ring a bell?
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Well they wanted to keep Hargeaves enough that we had to wait another season to convince them to sell and Fergie was pretty dead set on bringing him in.

Schweinsteiger cost about 50p, wanted a new challenge and was clearly past his best, I don’t think there was ever any huge expectation for him to set the world alight.
 
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