I think it goes without saying that you don't plan to fail, and this is the last thing on the mind of anyone doing signings during the very first transfer window of a new manager.
Do we indulge our managers too much?
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This is my concern as well. The salary we have to pay FdJ to attract him here is literally insane. He hasn't even won La Liga with Barcelona and we are expected to pay him more than Pogba was on? This is where you need an experienced DoF who directs the club in a linear line of decisions. I get you have to appease the new manager but De Jong should have been ruled out because of his insane wages. Just because the club has the ability to pay that money it should only be done for players who are truly world class and/or very marketable. I'd argue De Jong is neither.
I will say that I disagree with huge time wages but then again, on the flipside, we earned some pretty crazy success in the past using those methods and if we want to compete we have to seriously consider doing such things. We should just be very careful about how we go about it, for sure. I don't think ETH is the person who decides that kind of thing, though, I think he picks the targets with the other two members of the decision making group and identifies who he feel will give the biggest impact to potentially getting back into CL football next season, and the finance dudes then take that into consideration and make the gamble. And rest assured, every single signing is a gamble, for every club.
We do.
There is no predetermined style at the club, so it comes from the manager. When the managers change, the profile of players needed change and the never ending cycle continues.
The only way to break it, is getting a manager who works. Otherwise, you're back to square one. Ralf preached doing it the other way, coming from the DOF, but we know how that went.
There is no predetermined style at the club, so it comes from the manager. When the managers change, the profile of players needed change and the never ending cycle continues.
The only way to break it, is getting a manager who works. Otherwise, you're back to square one. Ralf preached doing it the other way, coming from the DOF, but we know how that went.
Difficult to judge at times. I find it extremely hard to believe that some of those signings in the Post-SAF era were made by the managers. Some of them looked more like a case of:
United Board: do you want VDB, Fred, Morgan Schneiderlin etc.
Manager: well, I ...
United Board: it's either them or nobody
Manager: ...fine, I guess
Some were bad manager signings, others were forced on managers who really weren't going to say no if it meant no alternative.
United Board: do you want VDB, Fred, Morgan Schneiderlin etc.
Manager: well, I ...
United Board: it's either them or nobody
Manager: ...fine, I guess
Some were bad manager signings, others were forced on managers who really weren't going to say no if it meant no alternative.
Really hope this isn't true. I thought the whole point of us getting a DOF was to enable some level of continuity despite managerial changes.
It does show a lack of imagination. There are a lot of clubs with a lot of good players, instead of looking for them, we are limiting ourselves to Ajax and players who have played at Ajax. The way ETH sets up his team is not that unique that only players who've been with him before can learn it.
Exactly this. ETH had no say like how he is demanding here. No manager at Bayern, Juventus or Inter have that kind of sway with the board, they just get on with their job of coaching available players. Of course these managers can ask for a certain type of player but in the end they don't get to decide who exactly they want.
Bullshit. We could get any manager other than the ones at City and Liverpool.
Not again. It is a very bad thing, we cannot keep changing our squad for every manager. There has to be a continuity in our playing style without a manager.
It has nothing to do with CV. There are many directors of football who did excellent work despite never having done such a job before. Michael Edwards is seen as the gold standard on here, yet Liverpool was his first DoF job. Chelsea promoted Emenalo from scout to DoF despite him having no previous experience in such a job. He signed them Courtois, Lukaku, Mata, Cahill, De Bruyne, Bamford, Hazard, Oscar, Azpilicueta, Moses, Willian, Diego Costa, Fabregas, Matic, Salah, Zouma etc.
DoF is a role many clubs appoint internally, Murtough doesn’t need a CV to back up his decisions.
Exactly. There is no one willing to sign FdJ but here we are trying so desperately with a club who are in need of money, of course they aren't going to let him go on the cheap or for a reasonable price.
The problem here is that Emenalo and Edwards did their jobs quite well. But ours don't do it, they just get the list from the manager and are trying to desperately sign whoever is on that list. What is the point of a DoF job for us if all that person is doing is passing on the manager's list.
The only way to end this problem is by deciding on a playing style and appointing a suitable DoF and ask new managers to get on with coaching the available players and then asking them for profile of players they want to sign, not names.
You are not in the real world mate.
Micheal Edwards had spent 6 years as head of performance analysis at Portsmouth and then another 2 years at Spurs. He then moved to Liverpool were he climbed his way to Sporting director at a team which was slowly but surely improving. Murtough came to a club during the Moyes administration and kept being promoted by Woodward while United kept hitting new lows. Yet somehow we are lead to believe that the guy had no fault at all. This excuse kept being used despite the fact that under his tenure Fletcher was given the technical director role despite having no experience, Ole was kept too long, we signed a semi retired manager as his replacement who had never managed a top club and we're still look sluggish on the transfer market
I don't agree with you at all. Whenever I move companies I always try to take at least person that has worked for me before. When I'm recruiting I'll look at who I know before I go out to market. These people know my culture, the way I work and what is expected of them. Most importantly, I know everything about them.
The only metric that we should be concerned about is whether the players we are looking at are good enough to play for us. If they are, then it can only be a benefit to us if they have worked with Ten Hag before.
Sure but shouldn't the priority be the other way around ...?
Let's forget that what you do(I'm assuming) is completely different to coaching a football team. Even you take just one person from your previous company, look at the players we are linked with. Is it just one Ajax player?
I'm really not sure why this bothers you so much. The only thing we should be concerned with is whether they are good enough. Is there any actual negative you can think of to signing players he knows well other than a 'lack of imagination'?
Two of them? We gonna win the league!Excelent! Those scouts probably scouting new AWB and new Maguire, or some big name marketing player, or they have been working hard scouting PL players. Or they have scouted players to fit Ole ball.. Oh.. Bet they need time to learn about EtH's football to find players for him.
Expected cca 2024...
Should be mix beetwen scouts doing their job and some players manager wants. Having a list of 804 RB's and choosing 805th is not very good scouting. I don't trust those people (scouts). When was the last time they scouted and got us a good player? When was the last time they got us young no name player for fish and chips who did great?
Or maybe they found excelent players but David, Louis, Jose and Ole did not want them. Those players went to other clubs and soon our scouts will be like Wenger. (Awe almost signed him and him and them and those too).
It's just that talented footballers are very few and if we further shrink our criteria to players who the manager has worked with before then we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Another concern with me is the Dutch league is a much weaker league than say La Liga or Serie A and if we only target players from there then we are even more likely to fail.
If I were a DOF at United, I'd certainly pay extra attention to players ETH has worked with and rates highly.
That's common sense - here and now.
But.
If I were a DOF at United I would - on general principle - consider the manager's personal opinion on players secondary to an overall policy on player recruitment.
Ideally, the manager's personal favourites would - also - fit the profile of player we're going for. But the latter should always be more important than the former.
That's common sense - here and now.
But.
If I were a DOF at United I would - on general principle - consider the manager's personal opinion on players secondary to an overall policy on player recruitment.
Ideally, the manager's personal favourites would - also - fit the profile of player we're going for. But the latter should always be more important than the former.
I don't believe that we are shrinking our criteria as such. We've just had a major overhaul of club staff & many of those departing were heavily involved in our scouting network, which we can all agree has not really been fit for purpose based on results. By extension that means that our existing data on players should be questioned and that rules out many speculative targets that these guys were looking at and recommending.
What we are seeing this summer so far is exactly what I'd expect to see happen in these circumstances. Backing this manager is essential and if that means we bring in some of his trusted former players this summer then that is what we should do.
If that's the case we should have retained the services of Rangnick. At least that would have increased our search criteria to include Bundesliga as well. My point is I hate this back manager to the complete schtick, no club does this. What if ETH turns out to be bad, do we do another overhaul of the squad again?
Ultimately we have no idea which players the club are looking at. We see lots of mentions of Ajax players because reporters are required to post content and act as though they are ITK, and listing former players is low hanging fruit. I would not be surprised if we did not sign any players from Ajax, but if we do I will find some comfort in the fact that the manager knows the player very well and trusts them to be successful.
The club should always back the manager (head coach) - within reason.
But the club should never rely on the manager to identify the right players.
The manager (head coach) should not be the final authority on recruitment (whether it's from within or without).
At United - right now - Murtough should "outrank" ETH in terms of player recruitment (in terms of having the final say).
That's the only way forward, as far as I'm concerned.
(And no - that doesn't mean I think much of Murtough...he has everything to prove. But it's the model we should go for.)
Normally, I woyld agree.
It defeats the entire purpose of having a director of football. However, up until late April, the club had not chosen the coach it wanted. To compound that, the club chose a coach with a very specific style of football. It's natural that the club became flexible. It has also been reoorted that the players we sre after are players Murtough and ETH are in agreement are good players.
Exactly my point as well. Supporting your manager(head coach) within reason is something our fanbase is completely split on, almost half of our fanbase think our managers don't get the backing if we don't end up signing every player the manager asks for. That's not within reason.
If that's the case, then we have to wait and watch who we sign. I'd be happy if we are looking to sign from a wide variety of talent pool and we end up getting a good team for the next season. I'd also be happy if we only end up signing Ajax players and we turn out to be good as well. But the cynic in me thinks only if we do the former we'd be successful next season.
I feel the opposite. Every transfer is a risk with multiple things that can go wrong. If the manager already knows the player, is aware of what type of environment they would thrive in, knows exactly what job they can do for him, then a small part of that risk is mitigated.
I agree, absolutely.
However - of course - for us, as fans, the real question is whether we trust the people behind the manager.
For very good reasons, United fans haven't done that for years now.
But - and for me, this is the key point, what should be be the real/main/maybe ONLY question: it shouldn't be about whether we think ETH is a genius, it should be about whether we think Murtough is...maybe not a genius, but at least someone who is pretty good on the football side.
Because he should be more important than ETH long term. ETH may or may not be a top, top "manager" - we all hope he is, of course. But he shouldn't be the one we're pinning all our hopes on. In fact, he should - ideally - be a secondary figure.
All of the players in question would be available to us with the exception of Frenkie de Jong imo. But the difference with having EtH at the helm is that he makes the potential capture of Frenkie de Jong a real possibility for a club who didn't qualify for the champions league. And from what I've read and heard about Frenkie de Jong, he's a professional who will do his job no matter who the head coach is. And having someone like Graham Potter succeeding EtH in a hypothetical scenario would actually help Frenkie de Jong, because Potter like EtH, implements a very similar approach to the game, which places a emphasis on zonal and positional control in possession. And that suits a player like Frenkie de Jong.
A club like Man Utd when presented with the opportunity to sign a player like Frenkie de Jong, should only think positively. When Van Gaal was at Bayern and wanted Robben who was surplus to requirements at Real Madrid, Bayern went out and bought the then 25 year old Robben. Van Gaal only lasted 2 years but Robben became a legend at the club and gave them over a decade of service at the highest level.
Wesley Sneijder also left Ajax and was deemed be a underwhelming signing in Spain. But that didn't stop Inter signing the then, 25 year old Sneijder, and winning the league and champions league with Sneijder being a key cog in that team.
Klopp signed Mane after Liverpool's data department had given him the thumbs down to the Senegalese player according to reports. And most of the signings made under Klopp in his first summer window, were Klopp signings. But he made those signings whilst having Liverpool's football department in unison with him. Because the Liverpool board gave Klopp total control when he was appointed but it was Klopp who decided to work with Edwards and his team after they were seen to be part of multiple failures on the football side of the club.
I can give many more examples of big clubs signing head coach/manager targets. But what's important is to have the head coach working with the football department to make those decisions, and we weren't doing that before. And people are suggesting players like Carlos Soler, Tielemans etc due to their contracts coming to an end, but none of those players have the potential ability of Frenkie de Jong. And the same people in the past wanted Mourinho as manager and had Aaron Wan Bissaka in their all time EPL squad. And the irony of it all is that the same people then criticised the club for making those appointments/signings when they were just as clueless.
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Yes I think we do. Even the likes of Klopp when he joined Liverpool had to work within certain parameters with regards to recruitment.
To some degree we have to trust Ten Hag. He is the manager that the club have chosen to place their faith in so if he has a clear first choice in the transfer market I can understand the club bending to his will a little bit.
However, my concern with De Jong is the wages. The biggest mistake in approach we have made in the last 10 years is consistently paying our players significantly higher salaries than their market value. This has made us extremely inflexible in the market as we have players that don’t make the grade that we can’t get off the books.
People talk about “resell value” when discussing incoming transfers and the player’s age is usually the primary factor that gets talked about.
But I think the club completely miss the point that in order for a player to have resell value you have to be able to sell them mid-contract. And to sell a player mid-contract there needs to be at least one potential buyer that is prepared to offer that player an equal or improved salary.
This doesn’t happen if you consistently pay players more than they’re worth.
You would struggle to run through our squad and find many players that could get a higher salary elsewhere.
We have one of the biggest wage budgets in the world and we’re one of the biggest clubs in the world. Our highest paid player should be one of the top 5 players in the world operating at their peak. Our top 5 paid players should be amongst the best in their position in the world. It feels like we are far from that and I’m not sure we have learnt our lesson.
Obviously I remain optimistic that Ten Hag and De Jong will be a success but if De Jong were to outlast Ten Hag at the club then we could end up with another difficult player contract situation and therefore I do question if we have really learned anything from our past mistakes.
This summer felt like an opportunity to rebalance the wage bill with some of our top earners moving on. I hope we don’t end up back in the same mess.
To some degree we have to trust Ten Hag. He is the manager that the club have chosen to place their faith in so if he has a clear first choice in the transfer market I can understand the club bending to his will a little bit.
However, my concern with De Jong is the wages. The biggest mistake in approach we have made in the last 10 years is consistently paying our players significantly higher salaries than their market value. This has made us extremely inflexible in the market as we have players that don’t make the grade that we can’t get off the books.
People talk about “resell value” when discussing incoming transfers and the player’s age is usually the primary factor that gets talked about.
But I think the club completely miss the point that in order for a player to have resell value you have to be able to sell them mid-contract. And to sell a player mid-contract there needs to be at least one potential buyer that is prepared to offer that player an equal or improved salary.
This doesn’t happen if you consistently pay players more than they’re worth.
You would struggle to run through our squad and find many players that could get a higher salary elsewhere.
We have one of the biggest wage budgets in the world and we’re one of the biggest clubs in the world. Our highest paid player should be one of the top 5 players in the world operating at their peak. Our top 5 paid players should be amongst the best in their position in the world. It feels like we are far from that and I’m not sure we have learnt our lesson.
Obviously I remain optimistic that Ten Hag and De Jong will be a success but if De Jong were to outlast Ten Hag at the club then we could end up with another difficult player contract situation and therefore I do question if we have really learned anything from our past mistakes.
This summer felt like an opportunity to rebalance the wage bill with some of our top earners moving on. I hope we don’t end up back in the same mess.
Yes, our managers have had far too much say in recruitment - however, I think that's largely down to a very poor and backwards approach to Scouting and recruitment that has failed to evolve since the 1980s
Firstly, making judgement calls on purchases based on press rumours is stupid. United have brought zero players in so far, some people act like we have bought five Ajax players and Tyrell Macacia.
Regarding the question at hand, what is the ideal when a manager arrives? Looking at the first transfer windows of Klopp at Pool, they got in three former Bundesliga players (Karius from Mainz, Klavan from Augsburg and Mane whom Klopp had watched at Leipzig) and Wijnaldum from Newcastle. Guardiola at City was even fitted with his Barca sports director before he came, and of the first big buys, two was from the Bundesliga whence he came (Sane from Schalke, Gündogan from Dortmund), one from Barca (Bravo), one more from La Liga (Nolito from Celta) and one from the PL (Stones). Which means in both their cases, the majority of the signings were from ‘obvious’ sources with regards to the new manager, players the new manager clearly were well aware of and informed about.
Maybe this is just the reasonable way to go about things. When a new manager arrives, it will likely kick start implementation of his methods if he has players he knows are likely congruent to his style. Whereas for a DoF/Scouting department, it will likely take time to learn which profile of players to scout for in relation to that managers style. Maybe only after a year, that way of scouting will have a better chance of succeeding than following the managers admittedly limited knowledge of players.
This will probably look different at clubs where a owner, president and/or a DoF has much more sway, like Chelsea and Real Madrid, where managers are ‘bought and sold’ as quickly as the players (or quicker), whereas City and Pool clearly went for managers they intended to give more time because they wanted them to bring a more wholistic method to the development of the club. There is no clear evidence as to what is the better path of those, but going for Ten Hag is certainly a choice more in the latter vein, hence it maybe would make sense to follow the managers suggestions more closely for the first window at least.
Note that pool and city are not examples of the manager-like players succeeding better - that seems hard to predict. The effect would more be seen on the success of implementing the style in the team as such, and of course the show of trust boostong the authority of the new man in charge.
Regarding the question at hand, what is the ideal when a manager arrives? Looking at the first transfer windows of Klopp at Pool, they got in three former Bundesliga players (Karius from Mainz, Klavan from Augsburg and Mane whom Klopp had watched at Leipzig) and Wijnaldum from Newcastle. Guardiola at City was even fitted with his Barca sports director before he came, and of the first big buys, two was from the Bundesliga whence he came (Sane from Schalke, Gündogan from Dortmund), one from Barca (Bravo), one more from La Liga (Nolito from Celta) and one from the PL (Stones). Which means in both their cases, the majority of the signings were from ‘obvious’ sources with regards to the new manager, players the new manager clearly were well aware of and informed about.
Maybe this is just the reasonable way to go about things. When a new manager arrives, it will likely kick start implementation of his methods if he has players he knows are likely congruent to his style. Whereas for a DoF/Scouting department, it will likely take time to learn which profile of players to scout for in relation to that managers style. Maybe only after a year, that way of scouting will have a better chance of succeeding than following the managers admittedly limited knowledge of players.
This will probably look different at clubs where a owner, president and/or a DoF has much more sway, like Chelsea and Real Madrid, where managers are ‘bought and sold’ as quickly as the players (or quicker), whereas City and Pool clearly went for managers they intended to give more time because they wanted them to bring a more wholistic method to the development of the club. There is no clear evidence as to what is the better path of those, but going for Ten Hag is certainly a choice more in the latter vein, hence it maybe would make sense to follow the managers suggestions more closely for the first window at least.
Note that pool and city are not examples of the manager-like players succeeding better - that seems hard to predict. The effect would more be seen on the success of implementing the style in the team as such, and of course the show of trust boostong the authority of the new man in charge.
Yes and the worst thing is that the club indulge them in what's known to be their biggest weakness.
Feel like he's gonna head the way of LVG if we don't pull away from the clubs transfer business.
There is an old saying about 'not keeping a dog and barking yourself'.
In the early days our 'new dog' has to be allowed to do 'his own barking'. He is a new manager at a famous club, that is suffering; he can see some quick solutions by bring in players he already knows can do the job, but its an interim thing to try to hit the ground running. As with any new manager brought in to do a complete turn around, his first 100 days are crucial, that's why FDJ must be a massive gamble, player-wise and success (do you know what you are doing) wise... and especially as this particular recruitment process currently has become something of a 'sh** show.
In the early days our 'new dog' has to be allowed to do 'his own barking'. He is a new manager at a famous club, that is suffering; he can see some quick solutions by bring in players he already knows can do the job, but its an interim thing to try to hit the ground running. As with any new manager brought in to do a complete turn around, his first 100 days are crucial, that's why FDJ must be a massive gamble, player-wise and success (do you know what you are doing) wise... and especially as this particular recruitment process currently has become something of a 'sh** show.