sglowrider
Thinks the caf is 'wokeish'.
Yep, as I said, there was a time when we were king of the hill in England. If a big stat was coming to England, it was United first and foremost. Now I don’t think we have any right to that position, but we worked hard to get there. A century of history and legacy. We’ve thrown it away to the point where City, Chelsea, Liverpool are all bigger draws than us, and we are competing in the same pool as Spurs and Arsenal for talent. We are somewhat wedged between the two.
Yeah the money was always going to talk with the plastic clubs, but United had that magic draw to it still. But those days are gone. The isn’t only living in distant memories, it’s not showing any signs of promise. We’ve only managed to keep pace on transfers by over paying both in fees and wages. Rewarding mediocrity on a mind boggling scale.
What this summer needed was sensible squad building, eschewing the policy of paying big fees for big players that either didn’t really want to be here, or were past their best. But we haven’t really done that. There have been no examples of superb scouting, unearthing gems or top up and coming talent. We’ve signed Martinez, Eriksen and Malacia, who I think are all good signings, but we’ve not made our squad much better, and we’ve failed to address the biggest gaps. What concerns me is that we now seem to be panicking, and I didn’t expect that from the new regime. The desperate pursuit of Arnautovich was truly hamfisted, only to pull out a couple of days later.
Players like Mazroui and Gravenberch should’ve been recruited months ago, and would’ve addressed two huge holes. The De Jong pursuit is shambolic. If we were moving for Sesko, it should’ve happened two months ago for example.
Most of the recruitment should have been done a year or at least 6 months ago. But unfortunately, the timing of things -- ETH having only been there for less than 3 months and the sacking of the key recruitment executives, its the perfect storm.