Okay fair enough, we've put a new team in place to support the manager. Based on what we've seen from them so far, I'm not convinced. How do you explain: spending all summer chasing Frenkie de Jong, signing Weghorst in January, and offering de Gea a new 200k/week contract? Hopefully these are just growing pains and they get their shit together this summer, otherwise they will hang ETH out to dry and the never-ending cycle is just going to continue.
I think before I answer your questions, I have to make clear about what I expect from the people leading on the structural side of the football club. And that is that they first and foremost have a strategy on how they want to develop a playing style that befits a club of United's stature. And I've seen ample evidence thus far from the way they went about appointing coaches in the youth teams (McKenna/Cochrane) to appointing Erik ten Hag at first team level with the use of data/analytics and a clear criteria in mind with the aim of developing a proactive attacking play style, which will hopefully trickle down to the younger age groups. Good coaches don't last long at youth level, so the likes of McKenna and Cochrane are now coaching at first team level. And our Women's team, which was said to be created from scratch by John Murtough in 2018, is in a genuine title race with a few games to go. Which is remarkable considering the likes of City, Arsenal and Chelsea have a bigger transfer budget.
And according to reports, a data scientist (Alex Kleyn) will join at the start of next season whose background is one where he helps under age teams at youth level align their play style with the first team, which can potentially help both the first team head coach and the prospective young hopefuls who are looking to make the step up to the first team.
Why i'm telling you this is because without having a strong foundation already at the club where the development of players and performance at all levels is prioritised by the heads of the various football departments, a club cannot effectively operate in the transfer market. So like I say, it's important to understand the whole structure because that structure was incomplete until the arrival of John Murtough, who has a history of working within football and was first promoted in the late 90s by Walter Smith at Everton, where he made Murtough the head of performance at first team level. This is a football guy known to be a big believer in developing teams with data analytics.
Unfortunately there wasn't much money to spend in January according to reports. And if the Glazers had made funds available in January, then i'm sure the likes of Jose Mayorga could've recommended some players. But if there's no money available to spend, then Weghorst becomes a genuine stop gap option. Liverpool did the same under Klopp, where they had to bring in a stop gap in the form of Steven Caulker who was a CB, but Klopp utilised him as a emergency striker in his short loan stint which came to an end due to Caulker's drunk and disorderly offences.
And as far as De Gea is concerned, I haven't seen any reports about him potentially being offered 200k a week, but rather the reports state that he's either being offered a reduced contract with bonuses dependant on how many games he starts (sounds like a back up keeper contract). Or he's been told he won't be offered anything more than what has supposedly already been offered, or he will be offloaded at the end of the season according to the United reporter for the Daily Mirror.
Whatever the issue with de Jong was, it doesn't really matter imo. What matters is that every player that was signed, is a fit for the way ten Hag wants to develop the team. And we're about 3 players short in the first phase of the build up to be a very dominant team. And what happens next with the ownership will decide our chances going into next season. We need players who are comfortable with the ball under pressure starting with the keeper, RB and with another midfielder who is comfortable with the ball under the press. Players who have the touch and technique and then express themselves and play with courage is what is missing in the build up phase and hence we come a cropper against teams who are adept at closing off the space high up the pitch.
