First window a manager under Glazers has actually got his 'first choice' transfer targets?

Hmm... I'd say Van Gaal always got who he wanted more than any other.
 
Kaos said:
I think there's very little chance EtH wouldn't have been interested. A world class striker guaranteed to get you 20+ goals a season? He's not as stylistically incompatible as you'd think he is too, considering he'd perfectly slot into this deep-lying forward role he's been experimenting with Sancho.
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Pretty sure someone would have said the same about Ronaldo. And he got the goals in his first season to the detriment of the team. I suspect EtH is only experimenting with Sancho because we don't have a fit CF

We can't on one hand say we want to buy players that fit a defined system, and on the other hand jump at any superstar name regardless of fit. That's how we've ended up with unbalanced squads being less than the sum of their parts.

Every man and his dog tends to link us to Kane, which makes sense considering he's a bonafide world class striker from England and he plays in the EPL. I'm just not entirely sure EtH actually pushed that hard for him as I genuinely don't think he's a perfect fit with the "pressing machine" and vertical team view EtH talked about.
 
There is no chance these are his first choice signings.

Onana probably was due to his style of play and existing relationship. Other than that none of them are.

He would have signed FDJ and Kane before Mount and Hojlund 1000 times out of 1000.

It sounds like he was seriously interested in the Centre Back from Napoli too, probably would have had him over Evans I reckon.
 
Mourinho got his targets in 2016 window.

Ole got his targets in 2019 window.
 
The problem with this thread some of these signings weren’t his 1st choice
 
DutchSerb said:
Early june Sky or the BBC said he wanted Mount, Rice and Kane. So I don't know.

I would say Mourinho got everything he wanted too. Even when he said otherwise after he got sacked. They gave him Pogba, Lukaku, Lindelof, Bailly, Matic, Mkhitaryan, Zlatan and Fred.
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There’s nothing about Fred, Mkhitaryan or Lindelof that would make me think they were Mourinho targets. They had none of the qualities he is known to favour.
 
He didn't get his first choices, few managers ever do. I've every hope Hojlund will be a fantastic player for us, but you'd struggle to find a manager or fan who'd take him over Kane given the choice. Similarly, Eric clearly wanted De Jong and was forced to rethink his system and go for different kinds of players when it was clear it wasn't going to happen.

I'm optimistic about the window as it looks to me as though we're solving some obvious issues by replacing De Gea, adding Mount as an upgrade on Eriksen and Fred, to provide backup and competition for Bruno and to give a different tactical option out wide, signing Hojlund so we're not relying on Martial or having to play Rashford out of position as our central striker. However, whilst I'd say Ten Hag has been backed by the owners, it's a stretch to say he's gotten his first choice targets.
 
I don't think he's managed to get all of his first choice targets, but I don't think many managers do.

However, this might be the first post-Fergie transfer window/season where we've not foregone an area of the pitch we wanted to strengthen, and/or not just signed players for the sake of it.
 
acnumber9 said:
There’s nothing about Fred, Mkhitaryan or Lindelof that would make me think they were Mourinho targets. They had none of the qualities he is known to favour.
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I find it hard to believe Woodward would get all of them when Mou says no.
 
Thought Kane was his first choice striker and KMJ his CB he wanted? I bet in May, Mount aside, Onana nor Rasmus were in the running as first choice.
 
tenpoless said:
Hmm... I'd say Van Gaal always got who he wanted more than any other.
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Rhyme Animal said:
This.

Also LvG was indulged massively, from signings to also daft sales that he for some reason insisted upon.
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I think LvG was the most indulged, but we also signed players he didn't necessarily want, which I think EtH (at least this window) has managed to avoid.

Moyes was a disaster. The club didn't need Fellaini, and Mata was a panic buy.

Shaw and Herrera were signed before LvG was appointed, and I don't think he'd have ever specifically targeted Di Maria or Falcao. Not convinced he actually wanted Memphis either. I think his firesale has haunted the club just as much as the weird signings, mind.

Mourinho was also fairly well indulged, but I'm not sure how much he actually wanted Pogba, and the rumours at the time were that Fred was a board signing. He also wanted Maguire a year before we signed him, by all accounts, but was told he'd already signed enough central defenders. Not sure he actually wanted Sanchez, either.

Solskjaer didn't do too badly in terms of players he targeted in his first season, but we definitely didn't a good job strengthening weak areas with him, hence Ighalo. In his second, Telles seemed an odd signing, and van de Beek was out of favour as soon as we signed him, so he looks like another board signing. I think he was also railroaded into the Ronaldo signing.

Last season was pretty well-focused in terms of key signings, but we obviously had a number of stop-gap signings. All of the loans were clearly barrel-scrapes, and I think even Eriksen was a bit of a stop-gap. There was obviously the de Jong saga too.

This season has been weirdly efficient. Mount and Onana clearly high on the shortlist of targets, Hojlund nearly done another we clearly fancied. Amrabat seems close and would be another useful signing. Rashford new contract too. Jones, De Gea, Elanga and Telles gone, and we've got varying degrees of interest in Maguire, McTominay, van de Beek, Fred and Henderson.

wolvored said:
Thought Kane was his first choice striker and KMJ his CB he wanted? I bet in May, Mount aside, Onana nor Rasmus were in the running as first choice.
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I think Onana would have been very near the top of the GK shortlist. Who else were we supposed to be interested in?

Even if Mount, Onana and Hojlund (and Amrabat) weren't necessarily the top of the shortlist for their respective positions, they were clearly on there and fairly high up, which is a far cry to how we've gone about our business in years gone by.
 
DutchSerb said:
I find it hard to believe Woodward would get all of them when Mou says no.
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I would tend not to believe Mourinho were it not for the fact Van Gaal said the exact same things. Woodward is a verifiable cretin so I would find it very easy to believe Mourinho didn’t want those players.
 
I doubt someone as raw as Hojlund is a first choice, more down to lack of budget

But getting 3 potential starters in before the start of the season is a definite improvement on our usual scramble on deadline day
 
EireRed_GS said:
If we complete the Hojlund deal (which looks likely), and manage to get Amrabat..

Is this the first season, under the parasites that are the Glazers, that a manager will actually get his "first choice targets??" (thats assuming he wanted Hojlund over Kane)

I know we were linked with everyone and their dog since last season ended, but signing Onana(45m) , Mount(55m) , Hojlund(65m?) & Amrabat(??m) could be considered a pretty decent window.. covers the weak areas we had on the pitch.. Or am i missing a big name that EtH really wanted over the summer?

Makes me wonder what this means for Glazers and their intentions, are they staying as expected and hoping another commercial deal evens this out for ffp, or are they leaving and letting next owners pay these fees off?
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How are we nearly 20 years into Glazer ownership and STILL people are talking about their involvement as if they're hand-selecting transfers? I doubt most of the Glazer family could even name 5 current United players!

All of the catastrophic mistakes and mismanagement over the last decade or so are down to one man - Mr Edward Woodward.

No coincidence that he leaves and we start looking like a professionally run outfit again
 
Kaos said:
Its possible Onana wasn't even first choice. We were mostly interested in Costa until we were priced out I think?

Kane I believe was his first choice for the CF position, and arguably Rabiot was preferred before Amrabat became linked to us.

Mount I think was an opportunity signing once we realised he definitely wasn't signing a new contract.
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I think Onana was just an opportunity which opened up. I doubt anyone would have expected him to be available so soon after joining Inter. Similar situation to Mount in that regard. I also doubt anyone signs Kane this summer.

Skills said:
Mourinho (16/17, 17/18)
Solskjaer (19/20, 21/22)

We've indulged them too much for the most part.
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This is true. I remember Adnan talking about Ole and Mourinho using their own personal scouts instead of the recruitment team when looking at players. Bypassing an entire recruitment team based on one persons opinion is never going to end well which is exactly what happened. That's one of the major things that has changed with Arnold/Murtough/Ten Hag coming in is things are now working in harmony rather than before where everything was a mess. I expect our transfer workings to continue being good. Last summer was probably the best summer we've had since Fergie disregarding the fiasco of the lateness as that was a Glazer issue.
 
OverratedOpinion said:
There is no chance these are his first choice signings.

Onana probably was due to his style of play and existing relationship. Other than that none of them are.

He would have signed FDJ and Kane before Mount and Hojlund 1000 times out of 1000.

It sounds like he was seriously interested in the Centre Back from Napoli too, probably would have had him over Evans I reckon.
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Agreed. Opening post is mistaken.
 
The issue is that almost every year we bring whoever the manager wants.
 
We don't know for sure. The quality of the players we have acquired is not the best/ game changing. It seems like we have bought a lot of squad players and are looking to add more like Amrabat etc. No real top notch quality there. So to assume that these are the ones ETH wanted in the first place is a bit daft.
 
RedBanker said:
We don't know for sure. The quality of the players we have acquired is not the best/ game changing. It seems like we have bought a lot of squad players and are looking to add more like Amrabat etc. No real top notch quality there. So to assume that these are the ones ETH wanted in the first place is a bit daft.
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Squad players? We've strengthened arguably the 3 weakest positions in our team. Onana, Mount and Hojlund werent signed at significant costs to be squad players
 
There is barely a player in the league that we couldn't have bought if the decision making had been better at the time. Money has been there, just could barely have been spent worse in the past.

Also we've surely learnt that we shouldn't get too excited about signings until we've actually seen them play for us.
 
First choice or not, I don’t know. But moreso than most windows in recent times, it seems we have focussed on areas where we needed players most and in the mould of what we are trying to do. At least from the outside looking in it absolutely feels like we’ve been more specific and structured in our approach.
 
If only we had new owners coming into this window then we’d of probably signed Kane/Osimhen
 
The thing is we have had to buy 4 or 5 players who will be in contention for the first team. That limits the chances of getting first choice because that’s going to impact the budget. I hope we’re getting in adequate players for ETH’s plans. No square peg / round hole buys.
 
I'd say it's more of he got the pain points addressed. What I like with ETH is that he gets on with his job and wouldn't make a fuss about a limited budget. I'm sure at a certain point he might have wanted the likes of Kane, Bellingham, De jong, or
Osimhen. But instead we managed to address most of our issues within the available budget. Which is the right thing to do for the squad. I predict in the future once he's happy with the squad you'll see us doing more like City and going for a 100m+ player each summer.
 
It's easy to get your first choice targets when they're guys like Mount and Hojlund instead of Rice and Kane
 
The Corinthian said:
I think Onana is probably his first choice.

Hojlund - we were linked pretty strongly with Sesko, Kane, Gakpo, Osimhen, and Kudus over the last 12 months. I think Hojlund is probably the least prohibitive in terms of cost.
Mount & Amrabat - we were linked with FdJ, Rice and Rabiot for these roles over the last 12 months, and again, probably because of wages, cost or Barca being cnuts that we didn't pull the trigger.
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Guessing off everything I know about ETH/ reports etc. His dream first targets were probably:

Kane (duh, but Hojlund seems his favorite of the rest)
Mount (there's a reason we were never going to walk away from him)
FDJ (duh)
Onana

So you consider we got 2/4 with very solid replacements coming through in the other two spots (assuming we get Amrabat).
 
I think it's probably conjecture to say he got his first choice targets. We don't really know. Until you see the documents listing our targets by position who knows? It's a guessing game really. But you can use some kind of logic to ascertain who the priorities were by the timing of the enquiries. It's probably the case that high priority ones are targeted the earliest in the window, with the highest priority positions attempted first, especially if the scale of the financial deal is large.

On that basis I'd say Kane was the highest priority by position and overall within the window because we enquired very early before writing it off.

Mount I'm not sure on. I didn't see too many similar profiles linked which strengthens the idea he was certainly high on the list. But #1? Couldn't say for sure because maybe he would have taken a different profile like Rice but settled on Mount? You can't discount that with mids. Maybe we enquired about FDJ again? But he definitely wasn't a scraping the barrel option as we started early and decisively.

Onana? Who knows, I don't think we would have gone too far down the list on keepers as they aren't too problematic to get. The costs are manageable. He knows Onana so probably that leads to the assumption he was high priority. But again, you couldn't discount that more expensive options like Costa were considered before him.

I think if we get Amrabrat it's an example of a signing that isn't first priority in any sense. I think if money is no object that isn't the target he goes for. It looks like pragmatism.
 
Mourinho got pretty much exactly what he wanted up until his final transfer window as United manager and Ole got to shape the team as he wanted in his first season in charge.

This idea that managers should always get their first choice players is a bit of a fallacy though. It isn't realistic to expect that most of the time and as long as managers aren't left desperately short in any positions, it's their job to make it work with what they have. I'm sure Kane would've been Ten Hag's preferred striker target if money was no object but it's not as though he's been wronged by receiving Hojlund instead. Transfers should be a joint operation between the manager and the club.
 
Because the "list" we see of "first choices" are reported exclusively by the media and in every summer are wildly inconsistent from source to source...I think it's impossible for the public to ever make an assessment of whether or not a manager actually got his list of first choices or not.

There could easily be a case of a manager literally getting his first choices but the media reported that they were all second choices. This is obviously in some ways intentional, as the club wants to downplay interest in some cases to try and create a better bargaining position. We'll literally never know...
 
I'm sure we'd be in for Kane if it didn't cost us £120 mill + and about 400k p/w in wages for a 30 year old.
 
Cutch said:
Squad players? We've strengthened arguably the 3 weakest positions in our team. Onana, Mount and Hojlund werent signed at significant costs to be squad players
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Don't think you got the point I was making.
 
I think ETH pivoted quickly this summer. In the past we have loved a saga that consumes us and slows us down. In fact its probably the Frankie saga from last year that made ETH think, I cant afford to waste time like that again.
 
Arguably this is a rare occasion when a manager and the club have been aligned on understanding what is possible and what isn’t and moved quickly to obtainable signings.

We didn’t waste time on impossible targets like Kane in the way we did with FdJ last year. It’s a very positive sign and one I hope is repeated in the future.
 
Surely ten Hag's first choice was Kane so I dont think so.
 
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