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

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Onerealunited said:
I really don't understand it! We have spend last few months on upgrades on the management and football side but come summer transfer window, the only players we seriously are linked with are 2 dutch players ETH knows. How is this a change from earlier years?
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Well Antony was a one season wonder with Ajax who we paid treble what we should have for, in a position we had Sancho, Greenwood, Diallo, Garnacho and potentially Rashford.
I won’t count Martinez as injuries aside he is obviously loved by everyone. Weghorst was a “we have no money” loan.

De Ligt is a name known around Europe for over half a decade, having proven far more than Antony ever has and has played for some of the biggest clubs in the world. He is being let go due to seemingly financial reasons, and is in a position we desperately need.
 
sixdwarf said:
Another symptom of the Dutch/Ajax connection that has brought us Antony and Onana (when we could have had bloody Martinez). Behind Dier in the Bayern pecking order. Not the player he was when Ten Hag managed him. But Ten Hag might resurrect his career. A gamble.
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Bayern fans think he is their best defender, I do think that they know better than we do, having watched all the games. Over 60,000 have signed the petition now.

I would not be surprised if they pull the plug on this. Then you lot can go back to ‚we are hopeless at signing players‘ posts.
 
De Ligt is a great defender, he’s much better than De Vrij imo. Would strengthen our defense and he’s a good passer of the ball.
 
MadMike said:
Doesn't matter though, does it. He's not interested in leaving, we're not interested in signing him.
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Never say never. ETH still consider De Jong the last piece of the zigsaw puzzle. With the new management they may back him. We are signing players that fit ETH's system such as De Ligt and Zirkzee.
 
We're the only team that, when looking likely to sign a good player for a reasonable price, the opposition fans sign a successful petition to make the transfer not happen. :lol:

It's just so us.

Always something.
 
Yakuza_devils said:
Never say never. ETH still consider De Jong the last piece of the zigsaw puzzle. With the new management they may back him. We are signing players that fit ETH's system such as De Ligt and Zirkzee.
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Naw thanks. I‘m over it like a bad breakup. My inner muppet is hibernating and won‘t get up for Frenkie.
 
Yakuza_devils said:
Never say never. ETH still consider De Jong the last piece of the zigsaw puzzle. With the new management they may back him. We are signing players that fit ETH's system such as De Ligt and Zirkzee.
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I don't think they can, even if they wanted to. We can't afford him. And I don't think the new directors will want him either.

Some of you are forgetting Frenkie's deal with Barca with escalating wages. He's their highest earner, currently on €720k pw at Barca before bonuses and with bonuses he can go up to €1m pw. Which is why he's not moving an inch from there. I very much doubt we can afford to pay him that or better, to lure him. We'll run into FFP issues. And for him, Utd will absolutely be a step down from Barca.

Plus it will likely go against the policy of not paying huge money for players over 25, since they don't have resale value. FDJ is currently 27.

Finally, we're very, very far from needing a "last jigsaw puzzle". We finished 8th, and I expect that if ETH doesn't get at least a top 4 finish this season, he's likely to be sent packing along with his puzzle pieces.
 
NLunited said:
Bayern fans think he is their best defender, I do think that they know better than we do, having watched all the games. Over 60,000 have signed the petition now.

I would not be surprised if they pull the plug on this. Then you lot can go back to ‚we are hopeless at signing players‘ posts.
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Our management won’t give a shit about the petition. It’s not the first and all the ones before didn’t matter one bit.
 
Onerealunited said:
I really don't understand it! We have spend last few months on upgrades on the management and football side but come summer transfer window, the only players we seriously are linked with are 2 dutch players ETH knows. How is this a change from earlier years?
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we have been linked with other CBs, but

- Todibo won't happen because the UEFA is dumb
- Yoro won't happen because he favours Real Madrid
- Branthwaite won't happen because Everton is asking for way too much

so that leaves de Ligt, who is available and apparently keen on the move. In any case, I don't see how we are only linked with players ETH knows.
 
Yakuza_devils said:
Never say never. ETH still consider De Jong the last piece of the zigsaw puzzle. With the new management they may back him. We are signing players that fit ETH's system such as De Ligt and Zirkzee.
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We could sign his GF and his mother for the women's team and he would still go into hiding if Barca accept our offer.
 
Hoof the ball said:
We're the only team that, when looking likely to sign a good player for a reasonable price, the opposition fans sign a successful petition to make the transfer not happen. :lol:

It's just so us.

Always something.
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Is it?
 
The reluctancy for this tansfer here is bizarre to me..

Do people realize we just finished 8th in the PL and cannot offer Champions League/Europa League football to potential signings? Being able to get a player of his quality, his age, his price, his experience at the highest level.. Its a jackpot signing..

Sure, when he was 17 and captained Ajax to the semi finals of the Champions League people would have expected him to be THE best central defender in the world by a distance, and it didnt turn out like that (yet), but that doesnt mean that he is not a world class defender still.. So many games at Juve and Bayern, so highly valued by both clubs..

Bayern doesnt want him gone cause he is not good enough.. They want him gone cause they finished 3rd and want to do a squad rebuild and desperately need the financial room he would bring in..

As for The Netherlands.. Its said often before in this thread.. De Vrij is playing RCB, because where on paper we play with a back 4, in practice we play with 3 (Dumfries far up and Ake coming center). De Vrij is more comfortable as a semi rb than De Ligt, who is a real pure central defender.. Koeman wants someone there who can easily drift of tot he right.. It has nothing to do with Koeman not rating him, De Ligt is just back up for VVD.

Ake/vdVen - VVD/De Ligt - De Vrij/Geetruida - Dumfries/Frimpong.

De Ligt brings proven natural leadership skills, physicality, height, football skills, 3-5 goals per year.. He is not as quick as vd Ven for example, but he is far from slow.. He made is possible that Daley Blind could excel as an LCB for a high pressing team ffs..

At this stage, being able to sign a player of De Ligt his age/quality for the prices which go around.. Absolute no-brainer!
 
BrilliantOrange said:
The reluctancy for this tansfer here is bizarre to me..

Do people realize we just finished 8th in the PL and cannot offer Champions League/Europa League football to potential signings? Being able to get a player of his quality, his age, his price, his experience at the highest level.. Its a jackpot signing..

Sure, when he was 17 and captained Ajax to the semi finals of the Champions League people would have expected him to be THE best central defender in the world by a distance, and it didnt turn out like that (yet), but that doesnt mean that he is not a world class defender still.. So many games at Juve and Bayern, so highly valued by both clubs..

Bayern doesnt want him gone cause he is not good enough.. They want him gone cause they finished 3rd and want to do a squad rebuild and desperately need the financial room he would bring in..

As for The Netherlands.. Its said often before in this thread.. De Vrij is playing RCB, because where on paper we play with a back 4, in practice we play with 3 (Dumfries far up and Ake coming center). De Vrij is more comfortable as a semi rb than De Ligt, who is a real pure central defender.. Koeman wants someone there who can easily drift of tot he right.. It has nothing to do with Koeman not rating him, De Ligt is just back up for VVD.

Ake/vdVen - VVD/De Ligt - De Vrij/Geetruida - Dumfries/Frimpong.

De Ligt brings proven natural leadership skills, physicality, height, football skills, 3-5 goals per year.. He is not as quick as vd Ven for example, but he is far from slow.. He made is possible that Daley Blind could excel as an LCB for a high pressing team ffs..

At this stage, being able to sign a player of De Ligt his age/quality for the prices which go around.. Absolute no-brainer!
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Great post.

Please refrain from talking sense.
 
BrilliantOrange said:
The reluctancy for this tansfer here is bizarre to me..

Do people realize we just finished 8th in the PL and cannot offer Champions League/Europa League football to potential signings? Being able to get a player of his quality, his age, his price, his experience at the highest level.. Its a jackpot signing..

Sure, when he was 17 and captained Ajax to the semi finals of the Champions League people would have expected him to be THE best central defender in the world by a distance, and it didnt turn out like that (yet), but that doesnt mean that he is not a world class defender still.. So many games at Juve and Bayern, so highly valued by both clubs..

Bayern doesnt want him gone cause he is not good enough.. They want him gone cause they finished 3rd and want to do a squad rebuild and desperately need the financial room he would bring in..

As for The Netherlands.. Its said often before in this thread.. De Vrij is playing RCB, because where on paper we play with a back 4, in practice we play with 3 (Dumfries far up and Ake coming center). De Vrij is more comfortable as a semi rb than De Ligt, who is a real pure central defender.. Koeman wants someone there who can easily drift of tot he right.. It has nothing to do with Koeman not rating him, De Ligt is just back up for VVD.

Ake/vdVen - VVD/De Ligt - De Vrij/Geetruida - Dumfries/Frimpong.

De Ligt brings proven natural leadership skills, physicality, height, football skills, 3-5 goals per year.. He is not as quick as vd Ven for example, but he is far from slow.. He made is possible that Daley Blind could excel as an LCB for a high pressing team ffs..

At this stage, being able to sign a player of De Ligt his age/quality for the prices which go around.. Absolute no-brainer!
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100% this. It really is mind-blowing reaction.
 
The question is does De Ligt improve on our current options and available at a decent price. If the answer is yes then it's a sensible signing.

I would say though we absolutely need to be in the market for two central defenders who don't have histories of injury problems.
 
MadMike said:
I don't think they can, even if they wanted to. We can't afford him. And I don't think the new directors will want him either.

Some of you are forgetting Frenkie's deal with Barca with escalating wages. He's their highest earner, currently on €720k pw at Barca before bonuses and with bonuses he can go up to €1m pw. Which is why he's not moving an inch from there. I very much doubt we can afford to pay him that or better, to lure him. We'll run into FFP issues. And for him, Utd will absolutely be a step down from Barca.

Plus it will likely go against the policy of not paying huge money for players over 25, since they don't have resale value. FDJ is currently 27.

Finally, we're very, very far from needing a "last jigsaw puzzle". We finished 8th, and I expect that if ETH doesn't get at least a top 4 finish this season, he's likely to be sent packing along with his puzzle pieces.
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This policy of not paying huge money for players over 25 doesn't exist, unless you have a good source to back up your claim.

Other than that, I agree that De Jong to United is very unlikely at this point, but that's only because he doesn't plan on leaving. If that ever changes, we'll be one of the frontrunners for him, if ten Hag is still at the club. Next summer seems to be the last chance, though, as he will be 28, and have 1 year left on his deal.

We can absolutely afford him as well, as he knows he would have to take a wage cut wherever he goes after Barcelona. There isn't going to be any club offering him 720k/week, it would probably be around half that, and there's only a small number of clubs who could pay that. United are one of them. If Barca offer him new terms, the numbers there will also not even be close to 500k, let alone 720k. So De Jong knows he'll never ever earn this money again.
 
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We are not getting a better player combination of quality/money/motivation to play for us at CB this summer so its a no-brainer.
 
BrilliantOrange said:
The reluctancy for this tansfer here is bizarre to me..

Do people realize we just finished 8th in the PL and cannot offer Champions League/Europa League football to potential signings? Being able to get a player of his quality, his age, his price, his experience at the highest level.. Its a jackpot signing..

Sure, when he was 17 and captained Ajax to the semi finals of the Champions League people would have expected him to be THE best central defender in the world by a distance, and it didnt turn out like that (yet), but that doesnt mean that he is not a world class defender still.. So many games at Juve and Bayern, so highly valued by both clubs..

Bayern doesnt want him gone cause he is not good enough.. They want him gone cause they finished 3rd and want to do a squad rebuild and desperately need the financial room he would bring in..

As for The Netherlands.. Its said often before in this thread.. De Vrij is playing RCB, because where on paper we play with a back 4, in practice we play with 3 (Dumfries far up and Ake coming center). De Vrij is more comfortable as a semi rb than De Ligt, who is a real pure central defender.. Koeman wants someone there who can easily drift of tot he right.. It has nothing to do with Koeman not rating him, De Ligt is just back up for VVD.

Ake/vdVen - VVD/De Ligt - De Vrij/Geetruida - Dumfries/Frimpong.

De Ligt brings proven natural leadership skills, physicality, height, football skills, 3-5 goals per year.. He is not as quick as vd Ven for example, but he is far from slow.. He made is possible that Daley Blind could excel as an LCB for a high pressing team ffs..

At this stage, being able to sign a player of De Ligt his age/quality for the prices which go around.. Absolute no-brainer!
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Lots of posters on here lacking common sense. I did an FM save where I bought De Ligt and Ugarte and they both turned out to be world class for us. That’s what we need. Players with leadership and potential world class abilities. They both have development left in them, a point to prove and hopefully yet to hit their peak performance.
 
Ali Dia said:
Lots of posters on here lacking common sense. I did an FM save where I bought De Ligt and Ugarte and they both turned out to be world class for us. That’s what we need. Players with leadership and potential world class abilities.
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Can't argue with that kind of common sense
 
BrilliantOrange said:
The reluctancy for this tansfer here is bizarre to me..

Do people realize we just finished 8th in the PL and cannot offer Champions League/Europa League football to potential signings? Being able to get a player of his quality, his age, his price, his experience at the highest level.. Its a jackpot signing..

Sure, when he was 17 and captained Ajax to the semi finals of the Champions League people would have expected him to be THE best central defender in the world by a distance, and it didnt turn out like that (yet), but that doesnt mean that he is not a world class defender still.. So many games at Juve and Bayern, so highly valued by both clubs..

Bayern doesnt want him gone cause he is not good enough.. They want him gone cause they finished 3rd and want to do a squad rebuild and desperately need the financial room he would bring in..

As for The Netherlands.. Its said often before in this thread.. De Vrij is playing RCB, because where on paper we play with a back 4, in practice we play with 3 (Dumfries far up and Ake coming center). De Vrij is more comfortable as a semi rb than De Ligt, who is a real pure central defender.. Koeman wants someone there who can easily drift of tot he right.. It has nothing to do with Koeman not rating him, De Ligt is just back up for VVD.

Ake/vdVen - VVD/De Ligt - De Vrij/Geetruida - Dumfries/Frimpong.

De Ligt brings proven natural leadership skills, physicality, height, football skills, 3-5 goals per year.. He is not as quick as vd Ven for example, but he is far from slow.. He made is possible that Daley Blind could excel as an LCB for a high pressing team ffs..

At this stage, being able to sign a player of De Ligt his age/quality for the prices which go around.. Absolute no-brainer!
Click to expand...

I agree with most of what you said, and that it would be a good signing for the fee and wages reported, but I've never understood this short-term thinking that "we cannot offer CL/EL football"

No player will make a huge career decision based on which team can offer them CL in their very first season. No team has been a lock-in for top 4 in the last 8 years except City, and Liverpool under Klopp, and Arsenal now under Arteta...but Liverpool absolutely cannot guarantee CL football year after year anymore either. Finishing 8th doesn't change the fact that we are one of the most attractive destinations in the world, and very few, if any players will choose Villa or Liverpool ahead of us even nowadays, just because they play CL next season.

I countered this silly argument 2 years ago as well, when people thought de Jong would choose Chelsea over United because they played in the CL...well they played 10 CL games since then, the last one coming in April 2023, and the earliest they're gonna play another one is September 2025...but that's far from a given as well. You don't join an English club because they have CL, you join them because their project is more attractive / suitable to you than others. It's impossible to know for sure that they'll keep finishing top 4 unless it's City or Arsenal.
 
BrilliantOrange said:
The reluctancy for this tansfer here is bizarre to me..

Do people realize we just finished 8th in the PL and cannot offer Champions League/Europa League football to potential signings? Being able to get a player of his quality, his age, his price, his experience at the highest level.. Its a jackpot signing..
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Small point, but we are in Europe this season.
 
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