Did we waste €200 million this summer?

FerociousCorgis said:
For me id put the pieces in place around the gk, and sign the goalkeeper as the last option. But our mids not show for the ball, and most of our defenders just pass it straight back to onana doesnt really make sense to me.
And yeah i mean who else at CF could we have gone for that would have been worth it? The options were severely limited. I like what hojlund has done so far. He is just back from injury not too long ago, has had ball in back of net but called back/cleared off the line. He attacks the space in behind pretty well. On the ball he needs some work, but still early days for sure
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I think Amrabat will help when he is in midfield. He can take the ball facing his own goal. Others dont want to do that.

I would have brought in Niclas Fullkrug from Wolfsburg, now at Dortmund. Way more experienced, refined, stronger and had a better shot on him. Older, but someone who we could have got a few years out of. I would then bring in a Hojlund under him and let him develop.
 
RedorDead21 said:
But doesn’t the amount of time you give them also depend on where the manager chooses to play them…how the team in general is performing around them etc. if you’re playing out of position and the team isn’t creating chances for you it’s harsh to make any real judgement.
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It does. Which is why I'm giving them the full year and not blaming any of the new signings now, only Rashford and Bruno. They are our senior players, star players infact and they are playing like absolute poop. Onana looks like the scapegoat this season but apart from 1 very obvious mistake, he couldn't do much for any of the goals we conceded. Hojlund has been decent if not great and he can't score if our supposed 'most creative player' can't find him or our 30 goal world class player wants to be selfish and runs down blind alleys. And Mount, as much as I don't like his signing, was nowhere near the reason we lost against CP.

I put the blame all down to Rashford and Bruno. You want wages of star players perform like one every game. Not like scoring 1 goal in 7 matches or like Bruno assisting 1 goal in 7 matches.
 
I'm going to try and stay rational, recognising it's way too early to make credible judgements and that we've had massive disruption from injuries / unavailability. But still...

Mount: A strange signing. A good(ish) player who might have been a smart squad addition as a free for next season but so obviously an awkward fit with a first choice team. I honestly struggle with why we prioritised him and ended-up spending so much.

Onana: His main strengths don't get much of an outlet in our current set-up and Raya would've been a much better buy. Adds to the questions raised about ETH's tendency to go for players who are known to him.

Hojlund: Over-priced but bought in a difficult market, where there were limited alternatives (Orban is the one that intrigues me). Potentially high ceiling.

Let's see where we are 12 months from now.
 
Can't really rate it when only 10-15% of the season is over and we've only seen the signings for less than half of the minutes played.

Can say that I wasn't thrilled by them. Amrabat was super overhyped on here. Onana felt to me overhyped by the media. Mount, although he adds to our squad he adds in a way that takes away from more needed areas. We could probably have done without him and showed more faith in youth since our strongest youth players currently are CMs.

Højlund is what it is. We were desperate for a striker so we paid the United tax on top of the desperate tax. The manager was clear that he wanted a young striker like Højlund next to another experienced striker signing which we didn't get. Market honestly isn't brilliant in that department.

I'm overall happy with the defenders and CMs in our squad. Not happy with the winger or forward situation. That's our weakest area and we'd be overall in better position this season I think if it weren't for a few cnuts on our books. A few players can ruin the morale which can ruin games. That's been a much bigger problem than the injuries because the injuries were at least anticipated by a bigger squad.

Personally I'm more pissed off at Greenwood, Sancho and Anthony than anyone else.
 
Berbaclass said:
Despite him winning their player of the year multiple times?
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People keep saying this as if it’s some kind of “gotcha”. Yes, even though he won their player of the year I don’t rate him.
 
Instead of signing Mount a Central Defender or a deep lying midfielder who can dictate the tempo of a match like your original post suggest was far more important than Mount a good player but not needed as we had Bruno.

Biggest issue for me was not clearing the deadwood. Martial, Mctominey, Maguire, Beek all should of been sold. Then one of AWB and Dalot should of been sold.

Onnana , Hojlund, Amrabat are all very good players and was pleased they signed. We needed more thats the problem. A New RB ,CB ,CM and another ST all should of been signed. We have left ourself short of quality again and now even further from City adding to Liverpool,Arsenal and Newcastle improving. We are back in the cycle
Of a decent season and then not building on it. Then taking 2 steps back.

Jose and Ole both had the same problems when they finished 2nd. LGV also when he got in the top four. Route of the Problem The Glazers and the Chuckle Brothers Arnold and Murtough upstairs.
 
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Its far too early to say.

Onana will prove good value, Im fairly sure. Hes being woefully exposed by appalling defending, making plenty of saves, good on ball and his build up is stifled by injuries to likes of shaw and martinez- ie ball playing defenders. Everything is linked.

Mount- we likely overpaid here, but its just too early. I personally dont see where he fits in with any balance but assuming he'll be in squad for another 3-4 years at least, who knows how he'll develop.

Hojlund- Again probably overpaid but the full 70m cant be called a waste. I'm hopeful he will become a good striker.

Overall its too hard to judge these guys in such a dysfunctional, unsettled team. Injuries have been a real killer at such an important time. New players are more likely to settle in a settled squad and really Awb, Varane, Martinez, Shaw, Casemiro, Bruno, Rashford and Antony are the core of what was decent last season. How many times have they played together this season?
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
Because it means your opinion is invalid.
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It’s no more or less valid than yours or anyone else's on this forum, shocking as it may be to you but your opinion isn't the only one that matters.
 
We did not waste 200 million. The worst that can be said is that we overpaid by tens of millions. We needed new players. The club would have been making bad financial decisions that would affect us for years if they had extended contracts of players like DeGea and Fred.
Onana - £43.9m, overpaid by £3.9m. Maybe £40 would have been fairer. But we needed a new keeper to play the way ETH wants this team to play. It was Onana or someone else, but we were buying a keeper. Time will tell if Onana is just in a patch of shaky nerves, or if he's not good enough. I think it was nerves.
Mount - £55m, overpaid by ~ 15-20m. £35 - 40m would have been a steal, since £30m was offered for McTominay. I think he will improve us dramatically.
Højlund - £72m, overpaid by ~ 12m. £60m sounds fairer, but there were no CFs available for that money. I think Højlund has shown very promising signs of not being overawed by this league, by being able to physically adapt already and start bullying defenders, and he's already scored a couple goals (feck VAR). Will he develop into a world class player? Odds are he will not. But he could be very good for us and still not be world class.

So we overpaid by £35m or thereabouts. But we also brought in Amrabat and Reguilón on short term deals, and those I think were very astute. If Reguilón had not been injured, Amrabat would play in the role we got him to play. So it's all still makeshift and make do.
 
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Depends whether Hojlund comes good or not.

Last summer was possibly a bigger waste. Antony, Casemiro and Martinez will need replacing soon.
 
AltiUn said:
It’s no more or less valid than yours or anyone else's on this forum, shocking as it may be to you but your opinion isn't the only one that matters.
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I'll rephrase it: many thousands of people rated Mount highly and voted him the POTY twice. You don't rate him, but don't say why, and you expect your - what is it, your gut? - to outweigh that. At 22 and 23 he won the POTY. He's now 24 but apparently past it, or he hoodwinked all those Chelsea fans. Which one of us is being unreasonable? You can also believe the moon is made out of cheese, the earth is flat, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event was an inside job, but unless you have some solid reasons / evidence, you're not worth listening to.
 
wasted like 10-30m. Considering it's United, I'd say it's an improvement actually
 
Well, in theory we strengthened areas that we needed to strengthen.

We needed a new GK, and I do believe Onana will be good for us.

We needed a couple CM’s. Whether Mount was the one, only time can tell really. Amrabat is a loan but he’s the profile of midfielder we’ve needed.

We certainly needed a CF. Rasmus looks like he has the raw physical materials.

The only area I would say we should have looked at that we didn’t was CB, because Varane, as good as he is, is only fit for about half the season, and that’s only going to get worse so we should be looking at trying to phase him out. That being said the CB situation seemed complicated by Maguire not wanting to leave.

So yeah, the ideas were right. Whether the players purchased in line with those ideas were right, only time will tell.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
We did not waste 200 million. The worst that can be said is that we overpaid by tens of millions. We needed new players. The club would have been making bad financial decisions that would affect us for years if they had extended contracts of players like DeGea and Fred.
Onana - £43.9m, overpaid by £3.9m. Maybe £40 would have been fairer. But we needed a new keeper to play the way ETH wants this team to play. It was Onana or someone else, but we were buying a keeper. Time will tell if Onana is just in a patch of shaky nerves, or if he's not good enough. I think it was nerves.
Mount - £55m, overpaid by ~ 15-20m. £40 - 45m would have been a steal, since £30m was offered for McTominay. I think he will improve us dramatically.
Højlund - £72m, overpaid by ~ 12m. £60m sounds fairer, but there were no CFs available for that money. I think Højlund has shown very promising signs of not being overawed by this league, by being able to physically adapt already and start bullying defenders, and he's already scored a couple goals (feck VAR). Will he develop into a world class player? Odds are he will not. But he could be very good for us and still not be world class.

So we overpaid by £35m or thereabouts. But we also brought in Amrabat and Reguilón on short term deals, and those I think were very astute. If Reguilón had not been injured, Amrabat would play in the role we got him to play. So it's all still makeshift and make do.
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This sounds very fair to me. As a club, you have to make decisions, some turn out better than others. I wouldn't have went for Mount as many on here wouldn't have but he can certainly be a useful player for us with his skillset. It is a valid question though if the team is already at a point, where it can make the most of him. Same for Martinez and Onana I guess. So I totally see the point of the discussion but the sentiment of "we made a mistake in the summer" just because the early results and performances went to shit is a bit too simplified for me. Moving forward is the only important thing and if we do that at the cost of a few results, it is a price I am very happy to pay.

edit: I think, it is worth pointing out that this is an answer on the very question of the OP. If people turn that into the hundreds iteration of "we made mistakes in the summer", answer would be different.
 
Wing Attack Plan R said:
I'll rephrase it: many thousands of people rated Mount highly and voted him the POTY twice. You don't rate him, but don't say why, and you expect your - what is it, your gut? - to outweigh that. At 22 and 23 he won the POTY. He's now 24 but apparently past it, or he hoodwinked all those Chelsea fans. Which one of us is being unreasonable? You can also believe the moon is made out of cheese, the earth is flat, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event was an inside job, but unless you have some solid reasons / evidence, you're not worth listening to.
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His short passing and positional discipline makes him too limited to be an effective midfielder in a possession based system, but we don't even seem to be attempting to utilise him like that anyway. His benefits to a team are intangible, he's good tactically and he'll press but those assets weren't necessary as we already have a number 10 who does that better than him, creates chances better than him and also happens to be our captain. He's not particularly fast or a particularly great dribbler. We bought him for an inflated fee to bridge a gap in the team that didn't need to be filled.

Maybe he'd do well in the right system but he's not good enough to warrant building a system round when, as previously mentioned, there's already a player in the team who fills his role much better than he does. I won't bother replying any further, I don't mind just waiting a few years to return to this thread and revisit everyone's opinion on Mount.
 
FattyFooty said:
Isnt the goalkeepers main job to be good at saving goals?
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It is. At least it has been. Many roles have changed over the years. Partly quite significantly. There aren't many great keepers out there, who are bad with the ball anymore.
 
Mount and Onana were pointless and didn’t move the needle
Antony was a waste of money previous season

we’ve wasted about 1 billion before that
 
Andycoleno9 said:
You are right. We spent 206 million. Not 200. My bad. :cool:
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You do know what country United play in, right? You can't just change the currency to suit whatever the days agenda is, otherwise you could reasonably say we spent over 32 billion in the summer.
 
NZT-One said:
It is. At least it has been. Many roles have changed over the years. Partly quite significantly. There aren't many great keepers out there, who are bad with the ball anymore.
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As things is now, i kinda wish Onana was a lil better at stopping goals.
 
Yes, and not because of the players we signeds ability, but rather their profiles.

Hojlund would have been great as a second option if we had an established striker. But we don’t. We’ve spent 70m on a 20 year old to score the goals in a side who can’t score. Unfair pressure.

Mount. Isn’t a bad player, but it’s not gonna work with him/Casemiro/Bruno as a 3, we should have signed someone who compliments the other 2.

Onana doesn’t look great so far, and we could have got Raya for about half the price.

According to Transfrmarket we spent 190m euros on them.

Raya - 30m
Kane - 100m
Palinha - 55m

Just for example if we’d went for the above 3 it’d cost the same, probably higher expenditure on wages though. You could swap Kane for someone like Watkins and spend the rest elsewhere.
 
Signing should be judged at the end of players time at the club. For example, Jordan Henderson looked like another hyped but no substance player that Liverpool for no reason fiercely fought off competition for his signing, until Klopp took over. Then Henderson was a key player in that team.

Sometimes it's not only that the players individual need time, it's about replacing other players around them before it finally clicks. The question is whether we were overconfident with our current squad into his new potentially more competitive season, and overstep with long term signing in Hojlund, or weird profile like Mount. Leaving us short hand for this season objective. Also whether we have the right vision, good scouting that we reap the long term reward of this window signings, or we run everything into ground and have to take everything down and rebuy the whole squad; is to be seen
 
Certainly can follow that line of thought. He had one howler and I think, it would have been good, if he had at least one or two worldies on top of that. But I think, it is a game of balances. I am pretty sure, DDG would have saved one or the other shot of the goals we conceded. But on the other hand, he had a bit of blunder in him in recent years, so who knows. I really like our defenders getting more and more comfortable making use of Onana though, I also like that he seems the polar opposite of DDG in terms of fearlessness. For me, I kind of don't expect him to become one of the goal keeping greats but I am pretty sure he will be just fine for the time being. I'd say, there weren't many obvious choices, Maignan maybe, who would have costed way more than Onana. Same goes to Diogo Costa. We overpaid a bit but he was in the CL final and there was lots of talk of him being one of the main reasons for his team to be there.
 
It is a little foolish to judge our transfer window after about three months, people did that last year saying what a great window it was,....It doesnt look that great right now last years window but I feel its still a little early to judge that one.

Made all the more ridiclous when of all our signings, bar Onana have any even played three full games yet? And how many of those have been in there best position with the best options around them?

Do I think we signed the right players? No, I didnt at the time, wasnt super excited by any signings, but that doesnt mean because they were not my personal choices am going to judge them flops or wastes of money after a handful of games.

My big regret with the summer window is as it was last year.....isnt the players we have signed or the players we have missed on...it is very much that we havent signed enough players and even more so that we have failed to sign players in one or two key positions this year, just like last year that were priorities as a squad.

In that respect, I would say we have wasted money as people can talk about not signing a centre back becuase Magurie wouldnt go....but we have wasted money not accepting bids for McTominay who is probably not going to play bar injuries, we have also probably over spent on half of or signings when there were maybe cheaper options.....both of which and as a whole would have allowed us to make one or two more signings.

The biggest reason we will fail to qualify for the CL this season is our failure to upgrade our squad both at centre forward and centre back with bettersquad options....that willl have an effect over the season, not just the current injury crisis
 
We got York, Saha, Valencia, Young, etc from EPL for very reasonable fees in the old days. I know it’s different situation now. But it’s criminal to pay so much for young prospects who are not ready. I hope Hojlund proves me wrong. But I feel it really ridiculous to put so much hope on him in this season. Not fair to him at all.
 
Andycoleno9 said:
How do you rate this transfer window? I just can't stop thinking that we completely missed out in this transfer window and made our team worse instead going forward.

Don't get me wrong; on paper all players look good and their qualities in general are not in question. Onana is the best ball playing gk in the world, Mount is very good attacking midfielder, Hojlund is Europe's top prospect and Amrabat is excellent backup for Casemiro. But except Amrabat, did we need any of those 3 players THIS season? It seems to me that all those transfers are done season or two too early.
Onana's top class ball playing ability is useless so far because we don't have a midfield who can keep the ball, Mount is not a central midfielder who dictates tempo (type which we needed) and Hojlund is not ready yet to lead a line (so we are again without lethal striker in attack).

I don't want to go in debate how we could have spend that 200 mil. There are 100 combinations how you can spend 200 mil. I am now just talking about these names. Did Erik looked more for next season already or he just overrated these players?
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I rate it as 8/10
 
Bad signings under ETH


Onana £45m
Rivals signed
- Raya £27m
- Vicario £17m


Casemiro £70m and then Mount £60m
Rivals signed
- Palhinha £20m
- Enzo £107m
- Nunes £42m then £53m
- Kamara free
- Rice £105m
- Lavia £12m then £58m
- Tonali £55m
- MacAllister £35m
- Gravenberch £34m
- Szoboslai £60m
- Kovacic £30m
- Sangare £30m


Antony £85m and then Hojlund £72m
Rivals signed
- Isak £63m
- Diaby £50m
- Doku £55m
- Maddison £40m
- Kudus £38m
- Kane £100m


These are just the players who were actually available and moved at a similar time.
 
jesperjaap said:
It is a little foolish to judge our transfer window after about three months, people did that last year saying what a great window it was,....It doesnt look that great right now last years window but I feel its still a little early to judge that one.

Made all the more ridiclous when of all our signings, bar Onana have any even played three full games yet? And how many of those have been in there best position with the best options around them?

Do I think we signed the right players? No, I didnt at the time, wasnt super excited by any signings, but that doesnt mean because they were not my personal choices am going to judge them flops or wastes of money after a handful of games.

My big regret with the summer window is as it was last year.....isnt the players we have signed or the players we have missed on...it is very much that we havent signed enough players and even more so that we have failed to sign players in one or two key positions this year, just like last year that were priorities as a squad.

In that respect, I would say we have wasted money as people can talk about not signing a centre back becuase Magurie wouldnt go....but we have wasted money not accepting bids for McTominay who is probably not going to play bar injuries, we have also probably over spent on half of or signings when there were maybe cheaper options.....both of which and as a whole would have allowed us to make one or two more signings.

The biggest reason we will fail to qualify for the CL this season is our failure to upgrade our squad both at centre forward and centre back with bettersquad options....that willl have an effect over the season, not just the current injury crisis
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As soon as the window shut , all of us knew we had a bad recruitment..
Like you pointed out, the issue is we didn't sign enough players .. Bruno played 70+ games last season... rashford is hot and cold .. antony is meh.. Sancho is meh.. Garnacho is 18, pellestri is 18.. Erikson cannot run and we have nobody with his ability in the pitch.. and we have.a 17 year old CF..
We should have signed another CF. like Real did.. a midfielder that can cover Erikson and a CB as Varane is always injured and Maguire was ready to leave ..
 
Not 200m.. you can extrapolate it to £400m and judge the previous one too.

- Antony - waste of money, around £30m fair value
- Casemiro - good but overpriced due to a lot of mileage on those legs, should've been around £40m
- Lisandro - good
- Malacia - ok
- Wout/Eriksen - hit and miss

- Mount - waste of money, at most £35m squad player
- Hojlund - has raw talent, striker market is very dry at the moment but for £70m you'd expect a lot more. Probably should've been around £40m for the potential, problem is we need a top striker now given how weak the rest of the attack is.
- Onana - good enough, though overpriced. I think Roberto Sanchez is a similar calibre keeper.
- Amrabat / Regulion - good

So in total a lot of the big signings have either been a waste of money or wild overpays. The biggest issue by far though is bad scouting - these are largely players ETH has coached before or played against in the Eredivisie, which means he doesn't have the time to effectively scout other players. So we end up overpaying for because we have no alternatives as the club are not scouting better options for him. Same story under Ole with the likes of AWB and Sancho.
 
I dont know about the future.

But 200m spend and we're no better at any department at all compared to last year is a traversty.

Onana : so far nothing special.

Mount : who?

Hojlund : one for the future, if there's one. I really dont see anything special. Let alone 70m special
 
hobbers said:
Bad signings under ETH


Onana £45m
Rivals signed
- Raya £27m
- Vicario £17m


Casemiro £70m and then Mount £60m
Rivals signed
- Palhinha £20m
- Enzo £107m
- Nunes £42m then £53m
- Kamara free
- Rice £105m
- Lavia £12m then £58m
- Tonali £55m
- MacAllister £35m
- Gravenberch £34m
- Szoboslai £60m
- Kovacic £30m
- Sangare £30m


Antony £85m and then Hojlund £72m
Rivals signed
- Isak £63m
- Diaby £50m
- Doku £55m
- Maddison £40m
- Kudus £38m
- Kane £100m


These are just the players who were actually available and moved at a similar time.
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If you don't laugh you'll cry. It's not even all about the money here, but the fact that we're tied down on those positions like dm and rw. Love casemiro as a person but we're stuck with him for the next three years at least.
 
city-puma said:
We got York, Saha, Valencia, Young, etc from EPL for very reasonable fees in the old days. I know it’s different situation now. But it’s criminal to pay so much for young prospects who are not ready. I hope Hojlund proves me wrong. But I feel it really ridiculous to put so much hope on him in this season. Not fair to him at all.
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Not really. Yorke, especially Ashley Young (last year of his contract, where as Ozil moved to Real for less which sparked issue with Rooney questioning the club ambition) were sizable fee. Back then there was less big spenders, let alone sugar daddies clubs like now. Arsenal can't do Wenger economical signings now, can they (Rice)? When club like Brighton can sell Caceido for 100mil after couple seasons under their payroll, you know the market especially buying from PL clubs is very tough.

The less talk about decades long signing the better. The concern is whether we scout well enough, and plan well enough or we will have to keep make emergency signing where our long term signing can't develop quick enough.

Edit:
https://www.manutd.com/en/news/detail/20-years-since-dwight-yorke-signed-for-man-united

"...It would take a record fee of £12.6 million to convince the Midlanders to do business and many observers at the time felt it was a case of overpaying for somebody unproven at the top level in Europe..."
 
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I would have signed...
Onana
João Palhinha
Niclas Füllkrug who went to Dortmund for $16.4 million
Hojlund after signing Fulkrug first, thus potentially reducing Atalantas demands. Someone round 50mil.
Kim if we could have got rid of Maguire.
Amrabat on loan to buy.

Would have taken anything for Maguire and McTominay just to get them off the wage bill.
 
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