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

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MadDogg said:
Bayern are looking to sell him now because they are trying to get their wage bill under control and they think that they have others like Upamecano, Kim and the likely incoming Tah who are more suited to how they and Kompany want to play. Basically they are faster and better on the ball. But based on their actual performances in his two seasons there De Ligt has been their best defender according to pretty much all their fans. Now, his relative lack of speed and ball-playing ability are the things that should raise question marks for us as well. Those are fair criticisms. But the amount of rubbish I see posted where people make out he 'failed' is ridiculous. The only thing he's really failed at is becoming the best defender in the world which is what he was hyped up as during his Ajax days.
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This is a very fair assessment.

De Ligt has had a really unusual career trajectory as he matured so early, creating extremely high expectations and also very high player costs (in terms of fee and wages) from his first move to Juventus.

It turns that he doesn't have the skill set and attributes to meet those expectations and probably not the overall level of quality to justify his current wage. But that doesn't mean he is a bust or isn't a good player. He is never going to be one of the top CBs in the world, he just doesn't have the ball skills or movement skills to rise to that level. But he's still easily good enough to play for a top club, especially one that surrounds him with the right mix of other players.
 
This Nick Serarano is a communicator of Juventus and Manchester United, maybe he knows Massimo Di Culo.
 
Vault Dweller said:
I've also found he's been pretty accurate with transfers he has covered so far.
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All he does is link United and Juventus with everyone. According to him, Sancho is already on loan at Juventus and we're a whisker away from signing Rabiot. He's also never written anything that wasn't a tweet in his career, which presumably began a year ago.
 
The Dutch Maguire, imagine how slow our defense will be with him and Harry playing together.
 
Nothing to do with what I want or don’t want, purely my gut feeling.. I have a feeling that this won’t happen. And it’ll be Morata-esque where we get someone else out of nowhere instead
 
Unless we sell one more CB, like Maguire, I don't see why we would use so much of the budget to sign two new CBs. We already have Martinez, Maguire, Lindelof and we just extended Evans as last option. One more would take it to 5, which is already a lot. 6 is overkill. If we have a massive injury crisis again and it gets to the point where we need a 6th for a few games (like Kambwala last season) I'd rather play a youth again or Shaw/Casemiro. We only have 25 squad spaces and 9 of them going to CB and GK, which is only 3/11 positions, is kinda insane.
 
MadMike said:
Unless we sell one more CB, like Maguire, I don't see why we would use so much of the budget to sign two new CBs. We already have Martinez, Maguire, Lindelof and we just extended Evans as last option. One more would take it to 5, which is already a lot. 6 is overkill. If we have a massive injury crisis again and it gets to the point where we need a 6th for a few games (like Kambwala last season) I'd rather play a youth again or Shaw/Casemiro. We only have 25 squad spaces and 9 of them going to CB and GK, which is only 3/11 positions, is kinda insane.
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The plan is not to fix the holes but to significantly improve our squad. We'll try to ship off Lindelof AND Maguire (although likely one will stay for another season). So it definitely makes sense to get two CBs. We are trying to get one of the most experienced CBs at his age (de Ligt) and arguably the biggest CB talent of his age category (Yoro).
 
MadMike said:
Unless we sell one more CB, like Maguire, I don't see why we would use so much of the budget to sign two new CBs. We already have Martinez, Maguire, Lindelof and we just extended Evans as last option. One more would take it to 5, which is already a lot. 6 is overkill. If we have a massive injury crisis again and it gets to the point where we need a 6th for a few games (like Kambwala last season) I'd rather play a youth again or Shaw/Casemiro. We only have 25 squad spaces and 9 of them going to CB and GK, which is only 3/11 positions, is kinda insane.
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I think replacing Lindelof or Maguire for a younger player would be a good thing, though it's debatable getting a second CB is a higher priority than reinforcing another position (LB ?).

Yoro is still so young, I'd favour de Ligt if we had to pick one.

That or we're playing 3 in the back.
 
aeh1991 said:
The plan is not to fix the holes but to significantly improve our squad. We'll try to ship off Lindelof AND Maguire (although likely one will stay for another season). So it definitely makes sense to get two CBs. We are trying to get one of the most experienced CBs at his age (de Ligt) and arguably the biggest CB talent of his age category (Yoro).
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None of us have an inkling what the plan is. We're all speculating here, let's not pretend otherwise.
 
Plastic Evra said:
I think replacing Lindelof or Maguire for a younger player would be a good thing, though it's debatable getting a second CB is a higher priority than reinforcing another position (LB ?).

Yoro is still so young, I'd favour de Ligt if we had to pick one.

That or we're playing 3 in the back.
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I think replacing one of Lindelof or Maguire is gonna happen sooner or later, but I don't think this summer is gonna be it. Both their contracts expire next summer, but we have an option for 1 more year for Maguire, whereas we've already exercised that for Lindelof. So we're in a position where either they should be offered a new contract or we should see their contracts out, because we're not getting any money for either of them with their age and contract situation. I guess there might be some small hope that someone still comes in for Maguire with £10-15m, but personally I doubt it.

I think it would be sensible to replace one CB every year and use the other 3-4 transfers for the rest of the positions like DM and LB and one more winger if Greenwood, Sancho & Antony are going to get the chop. After all adding a LB can mean Shaw freed to also play CB.

Also I don't think ETH has ever played 3 at the back for a season, so I would be really really surprised if he went for that this season. He probably knows if he's not too far up his own arse, that he got saved only because Ineos didn't have their new people in place in time to find a new manager and that he's in a precarious position. He must know another 8th finish will be the end of him. And he knows our main problem last season was scoring goals. So with all those circumstances, choosing this season to experiment for the first time with 3 at the back, will be a wild thing to do.
 
Remember the geese said:
I'm sure we do want two. However, Branthwaite looks as if it isn't happening and Yoro is likely going to Madrid. Remains to be seen whether De ligt and Yoro is an either/or situation.
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There are a lot of other center backs. Romano said silva was our utmost priority but too expensive. There's the Juve center back, Chaloboah, I think a prospect at Sporting and I'm sure many others we'd be considering.
 
RedRocket9908 said:
The fact it was reported earlier that a deal was agreed and that flight wasnt on the Manchester Airport arrivals list when I looked earlier so was added at some point this afternoon.
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So a random journo tweeted it’s done and you believed him and already went to flight tracking?
 
RedRocket9908 said:
The fact it was reported earlier that a deal was agreed and that flight wasnt on the Manchester Airport arrivals list when I looked earlier so was added at some point this afternoon.
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You need more hobbies
 
RedRocket9908 said:
The fact it was reported earlier that a deal was agreed and that flight wasnt on the Manchester Airport arrivals list when I looked earlier so was added at some point this afternoon.
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Flight number? Because I'm not seeing this at all.
 
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