Frenkie de Jong | The last muppeting lap

Frenkie to United?

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Highfather_24 said:
That's a good point, but they only reason early signings help is because it will help ETH with his pre-season training.
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This is football, people need to stop having the same strop about the same thing every year. It is not common practice for every team’s squads to be closed by first week in July. Fans have a tendency in the summer to forget about the existence of the old players and only have a tunnel vision towards the 3 or 4 new ones. Ten Hag is new here, so all 20+ players are new players to him. Marcus Rashford and Fred are ‘new players’ to him, if not to you and I. The vast majority of his squad will be with him in pre-season, but naturally, people seem solely focused on the few new ones.

What we do know, is that the majority of his squad will be with him on pre-season, if not all. The 20+ that fans guys are already over also need to be trained, and the training will be just as valuable. If anything, 2 or 3 players joining a week or two later who ALREADY have extensive previous training with him is less of a problem.

Naturally, if any manager could pick whether to have their entire squads closed by start of pre-season, they would, however, they are experienced enough to know that this rarely happens. Most years pre-season doesn’t even start at the same time for all the players regardless due to international commitments. It’s almost just descended into one of these things that fans say now.
 
Highfather_24 said:
Why not set a max limit on how much we are willing to spend for De Jong(say 80M), and then go about with our transfer dealings from the rest of the budget? I'm sure we need to sell players as well, and we can raise money for transfers from that, why are we not doing that?

I really dont buy this "one transfer at a time" shenanigans. Add that to the other stuff we do like buy players and play them in unnatural positions, buy players that dont suit our system at all, struggle to sell players, have drawn on public transfer sagas that mostly fail, ignore main areas of need in favour of easier signings or going for blockbuster names etc...

I just dont have any sort of faith in our recruitment system. Its broken, everybody knows its broken, and I really hope Murtough and co can fix it. I'm doubtful though.
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You are absolutely correct, but we are in such a deep hole that to get out of it will take several transfer windows/years to get to a state where we are on a more level playing field with clubs with similar ambitions right now (Arsenal, Spurs... at a stretch Chelski but more like West Ham). As soon as we are linked players want x% more wages agents want y% more cut. Needs patience to fix it.
 
Rozay said:
Naturally, if any manager could pick whether to have their entire squads closed by start of pre-season, they would, however, they are experienced enough to know that this rarely happens. Most years pre-season doesn’t even start at the same time for all the players regardless due to international commitments. It’s almost just descended into one of these things that fans say now.
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For sure, but I wouldnt be surprised if early results dont go well, and we see our manager making passive aggressive comments about our recruitment strategy. I mean it has happened before. Lets hope for the best. I dont think its too late for signings, just that I dont see any positive changes in our approach...yet.
 
Redcy said:
the problem with this narrative is that it seems clear we do have plan b’s. However it’s clear ETH feels that a player who is top quality, he knows, and knows his system is high priority. If the board turn around and tell him sorry you’ll have to have Neves for £50m instead of your key player for £65m because we need to teach Barca a lesson it’s not a great way to back the new manager is it.
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Maybe this summer we have, no one knows, as so far we’ve made zero signings… but in previous seasons we don’t seem to have it, unless last day transfer deal such as Diallo, Pellistri, Cavani (after failing pursuit of Sancho first time) and Fellaini (after failing pursuit of Fabregas) etc count as our plan B. And as far as I know, we overpaid for Maguire too without knowingly going for any cheaper plan B option.
 
Highfather_24 said:
Why not set a max limit on how much we are willing to spend for De Jong(say 80M), and then go about with our transfer dealings from the rest of the budget? I'm sure we need to sell players as well, and we can raise money for transfers from that, why are we not doing that?
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If we set a max value, then it could potentially break off the deal. The approach to getting the best price involves stretching the seller to the maximum (only works because the seller is in a more critical situation) and if it does not work out, the buyer either pays the price or goes for other options. De Jong is certainly the highest priority for the midfield targets, which is why the club is still trying all avenues to seal the deal without paying too high a price. For us fans, it can be long drawn but in terms of business transactions, it is the best way to get the deal.

Regarding sales of other players, even if we get more revenue from their sales, the approach is always to get the best price unless the situation is a emergency. The key message the club wants to send is that it is not desperate and thus, transfers the ball to Barcelona's court.

Highfather_24 said:
I really dont buy this "one transfer at a time" shenanigans. Add that to the other stuff we do like buy players and play them in unnatural positions, buy players that dont suit our system at all, struggle to sell players, have drawn on public transfer sagas that mostly fail, ignore main areas of need in favour of easier signings or going for blockbuster names etc...

I just dont have any sort of faith in our recruitment system. Its broken, everybody knows its broken, and I really hope Murtough and co can fix it. I'm doubtful though.
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The recruitment of immediate first team players is being addressed with the new restructuring. They have already realized where the issue is and they have put in the fixes, though it is too late for the upcoming season. So they will have to rely on ETH's recommendations for these areas.

However our recruitment has been quite good in terms of the academy talents, which is why I am quite optimistic about next season. The academy is there for a reason and it is most feasible long term approach for a club that wants to focus on a style of play. There are strong chances that ETH might use the academy to supplement some of the unbalanced areas (e.g. midfield), so lets see how it goes.
 
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OpenIntrovert said:
If we set a max value, then it could potentially break off the deal.
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I meant internally. All deals have a max budget obviously.


OpenIntrovert said:
The recruitment of immediate first team players is being addressed with the new restructuring. They have already realized where the issue is and they have put in the fixes, though it is too late for the upcoming season. So they will have to rely on ETH's recommendations for these areas.
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We dont know that. We really dont. All we can see is our actions in the transfer market wrt incomings and outgoings, and so far...
 
Escobar said:
When you are really shit at something, it requires all your attention. No distractions. And thats United doing transfers
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:rolleyes:

Going by this logic Albert Einstein was shit at his work because he focus solely on it.
 
Rozay said:
This is football, people need to stop having the same strop about the same thing every year. It is not common practice for every team’s squads to be closed by first week in July. Fans have a tendency in the summer to forget about the existence of the old players and only have a tunnel vision towards the 3 or 4 new ones. Ten Hag is new here, so all 20+ players are new players to him. Marcus Rashford and Fred are ‘new players’ to him, if not to you and I. The vast majority of his squad will be with him in pre-season, but naturally, people seem solely focused on the few new ones.

What we do know, is that the majority of his squad will be with him on pre-season, if not all. The 20+ that fans guys are already over also need to be trained, and the training will be just as valuable. If anything, 2 or 3 players joining a week or two later who ALREADY have extensive previous training with him is less of a problem.

Naturally, if any manager could pick whether to have their entire squads closed by start of pre-season, they would, however, they are experienced enough to know that this rarely happens. Most years pre-season doesn’t even start at the same time for all the players regardless due to international commitments. It’s almost just descended into one of these things that fans say now.
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Good post, people love to give City as an example, here are the deals from his first season. (Their preseason started on July 5th)

Sane - Aug 2
Stones - Aug 9
Bravo - Aug 25.

It's always good to have everything line up before preseason but it takes multiple parties to sign a player.
 
I’m also still waiting for Chelsea to stop ‘dragging out’ signing Joules Koundé. It’s only been a whole year so far.
 
Highfather_24 said:
Why not set a max limit on how much we are willing to spend for De Jong(say 80M), and then go about with our transfer dealings from the rest of the budget?
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Suppose our first choice right back is 30M and our second choice is 20M. If we limit our budget and simply buy our second choice, and then De Jong ends up only costing 70M, it means we missed out on the chance of buying our first choice.
 
It’s in Barca’s interests to work with us considering they’re broke, and this deal hinges on their future spend. FdJ is class, but they can’t expect to recoup 100% of his fee considering his form hasn’t been world class since his move.
 
I would imagine that the rumoured second bid will take place and become public knowledge in the coming 1-2 days, and that from there the deal will be done pending a medical by the end of the week / early next week.

Here's hoping.
 
Highfather_24 said:
For sure, but I wouldnt be surprised if early results dont go well, and we see our manager making passive aggressive comments about our recruitment strategy. I mean it has happened before. Lets hope for the best. I dont think its too late for signings, just that I dont see any positive changes in our approach...yet.
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We have let go a bunch of players -- this is as clean a slate or house cleaning as I have ever seen in all my years as a supporter. That's a plus. Enough with legacy players.

Secondly, as anyone who is responsible for a new operation or new there -- he will have his own pre-joining assessment of the team and a plan based on that.
Then when he gets into United, there will be deviations or pivots from his original planning based on his on-the-ground assessment. That includes the operational reality, actual financial constraints versus what was pitched to him and most importantly, his own actual assessment of the players.

We can assume the core of his plan -- the trigger or critical mechanism is Frenkie. Thats simply because his assessment and that of most people is that United is very poor at transitioning the ball from defence into attack. And for him as a possession-based manager, United doesn't have many player there who play in accordance to his world view. They are primarily counter-attacking players. Then he has to assess whether he can coach them into that philosophy. That will require his to have them on the pitch and decide.

If you know the dutch and I have worked with the dutch for many years, they are meticulous planners and detail orientated. Not long-term executors but nevertheless good planners.

ETH would have had a Plan B, C and D in case he fails to convince Frenkie over. If he gets Frenkie, who will he need to support Frenkie and narrow the other gaps -- before pre-training starts.

Then at pre-season training, he makes his assessments on a few other players on whether he can coach them into his worldview or otherwise replace them.

So I am expecting him to get 2 firm to firm-ish transfers by pre-season training. (My view is Frenkie and then a striker for obvious reasons.) Then trigger a couple more after seeing with his own eyes on the training pitch @ the end of June -- like see who can play alongside Frenkie with the midfielders we have. Then who can play on the RW -- and since we have Sancho, Anad and Facundo here already, not sure why we would pull the trigger so early on Antony -- unless there are a few clubs creeping around.

So in many ways, that's one deal at a time. A tree decision-making procedure. But for different reasons to say, Woodward's approach.

This is more for footballing strategic reasons --- as opposed to Woodward's budgetary constraint approach ie we would but our primary target and then see what money we got left for the others within the balance of the transfer budget.

New C-suite team, new manager and new coaches. They need to be given time to assess and then make their choices for what is achievable in the 1st season.
 
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sglowrider said:
We have let go a bunch of players -- this is as clean a slate or house cleaning as I have ever seen in all my years as a supporter. That's a plus. Enough with legacy players.

Secondly, as anyone who is responsible for a new operation or new there -- he will have his own pre-joining assessment of the team and a plan based on that.
Then when he gets into United, there will be deviations or pivots from his original planning based on his on-the-ground assessment. That includes the operational reality, actual financial constraints versus what was pitched to him and most importantly, his own actual assessment of the players.

We can assume the core of his plan -- the trigger or critical mechanism is Frenkie. Thats simply because his assessment and that of most people is that United is very poor at transitioning the ball from defence into attack. And for him as a possession-based manager, United doesn't have many player there who play in accordance to his world view. They are primarily counter-attacking players. Then he has to assess whether he can coach them into that philosophy. That will require his to have them on the pitch and decide.

If you know the dutch and I have worked with the dutch for many years, they are meticulous planners and detail orientated. Not long-term executors but nevertheless good planners.

ETH would have had a Plan B, C and D in case he fails to convince Frenkie over. If he gets Frenkie, who will he need to support Frenkie and narrow the other gaps -- before pre-training starts.

Then at pre-season training, he makes his assessments on a few other players on whether he can coach them into his worldview or otherwise replace them.

So I am expecting him to get 2 firm to firm-ish transfers by pre-season training. (My view is Frenkie and then a striker for obvious reasons.) Then trigger a couple more after seeing with his own eyes on the training pitch @ the end of June -- like see who can play alongside Frenkie with the midfielders we have. Then who can play on the RW -- and since we have Sancho, Anad and Facundo here already, not sure why we would pull the trigger so early on Antony -- unless there are a few clubs creeping around.

So in many ways, that's one deal at a time. A tree decision-making procedure. But for different reasons to say, Woodward's approach.

This is more for footballing strategic reasons --- as opposed to Woodward's budgetary constraint approach ie we would but our primary target and then see what money we got left for the others within the balance of the transfer budget.

New C-suite team, new manager and new coaches. They need to be given time to assess and then make their choices for what is achievable in the 1st season.
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Disagree with the part I’ve bolded

Most clubs sure, they’ll fail to get target A and then get target B instead.

United seem to do things wrong. When they fail with their plan A, they rarely have a plan B, let alone a plan C and then they just look for a plan A in a different position instead
 
sglowrider said:
Its a new team and a new manager if you have not noticed. But I will defend them on your argument that they have no Plan B. Manchester United is a £600million organisation.
You don't run an organisation that big if there wasn't any forward planning, budgeting and even any basic operational analysis -- benchmarking to employee assessments etc involved.
All those, at every function within the org chart will have planning, and evaluation of their goals/targets and output -- something quarterly or at worst, annually. All that will require scenario planning including Plans A, B C or D to be presented to their higher-ups.

The simple fact that you think they don't do any planning would imply that you know something they don't?

Plans and more plans -- its the choices/decisions that the executives above make that is usually what is reflected. It doesn't mean that they arent and Plan B,C or Ds.

The fact that the on-field results have been poor despite the investment of over £1.2billion over the past 9 years rests solely on the previous CEO. And based on joining the dots and seeing things from the outside, it appears to me that Woodward had consolidated most of the decision-making within his own hands, and had clearly not willing to delegate decision-making to the domain knowledge experts as seen in his gratuitous attempt at hiring a DOF for the past few years.

If CEO wants to control the decision-making process, then decisions are made very slowly -- and if you have a CEO who is a control freak and who lacks domain knowledge then time, money and opportunities are wasted.

That's what happened.

It's not the simplistic analysis as you had presented. Anyone who had had to undergo tertiary education like sports science or Business school would have to present scenario planning. And all of the C-suites within United appear to have had that level of education.
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Previously we don’t have it, so your generalized big club/organisation arguments (disregarding the context of our competitors), doesn’t really help to defend how incompetent the previous management were over past 8 years or so. I think we have a shite corporate culture, or whatever it is, from old management.

But sure this season we’ve changed the new management (CEO, directors of football and the manager), you can argue it’s a clean sheet for them. But things does not look convincing when we have made zero progress so far as compared to our rivals, when we clearly need big changes this summer, while manager clearly said he wants his new squad ready for preseason training (first session begins on 27 June). It’s only less than a week away. Not to mention we are going for completely new system/style of play, which would involves a lot of works from training ground, time is really running tight for us. You just dont want our preseasons training starts with McFred in midfield, Maguire/AWB in defence, and Rashford/Martial in attack etc, and spend all the time asking them to play ETH system, without any new signings at all.

But true it’s maybe abit too early to judge. Who knows maybe by end of this week we would sign 3-4 players.
 
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RedRonaldo said:
Previously we don’t have it, so your generalized big club/organisation arguments (disregarding the context of our competitors), doesn’t really help to defend how incompetent the previous management were over past 8 years or so. I think we have a shite corporate culture, or whatever it is, from old management.

But sure this season we’ve changed the new management (CEO, directors of football and the manager), you can argue it’s a clean sheet for them. But things does not look convincing when we have made zero progress so far as compared to our rivals, when we clearly need big changes this summer, while manager clearly said he wants his new squad ready for preseason training (first session begins on 27 June). It’s only less than a week away. Not to mention we are going for completely new system/style of play, which would involves a lot of works from training ground, time is really running tight for us. You just dont want our preseasons training starts with McFred in midfield, Maguire/AWB in defence, and Rashford/Martial in attack etc, and spend all the time asking them to play ETH system, without any new signings at all.

But true it’s maybe abit too early to judge. Who knows maybe by end of this week we would sign 3-4 players.
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You cant compare it with the clubs that have had the right structure in place and managers who have been there for 4yrs or more. They already know what they need. Its only an issue of topping up or replacing the ageing players.

You only have to go back and look at what they did in their first 18-24 months. They fumbled as expected -- and we had plenty here who was pronouncing them as failures back then.

Apples and oranges. If you can stop comparing against established managers/structures things will look a bit more reasonable and not as chaotic as it seems.

Let's see if Liverpool or City will look so ''well run'' after the current managers leave and their next managers go through the growing pains like ours. The only exception would be Chelsea which seems to have an excellent back-end structure in place allowing for the manager's tenure like a revolving door. Not sure we want to go down that route.
 
Rozay said:
This is football, people need to stop having the same strop about the same thing every year. It is not common practice for every team’s squads to be closed by first week in July. Fans have a tendency in the summer to forget about the existence of the old players and only have a tunnel vision towards the 3 or 4 new ones. Ten Hag is new here, so all 20+ players are new players to him. Marcus Rashford and Fred are ‘new players’ to him, if not to you and I. The vast majority of his squad will be with him in pre-season, but naturally, people seem solely focused on the few new ones.

What we do know, is that the majority of his squad will be with him on pre-season, if not all. The 20+ that fans guys are already over also need to be trained, and the training will be just as valuable. If anything, 2 or 3 players joining a week or two later who ALREADY have extensive previous training with him is less of a problem.

Naturally, if any manager could pick whether to have their entire squads closed by start of pre-season, they would, however, they are experienced enough to know that this rarely happens. Most years pre-season doesn’t even start at the same time for all the players regardless due to international commitments. It’s almost just descended into one of these things that fans say now.
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I think the thing is, most of us fans here, have no faith that our shite players are able to suddenly turn around and play dominating football under ETH, after the preseason training. We definitely need to bring in a lot of quality elsewhere who could fit into ETH football like a glove. Imaging relying on the likes of McFred capable of controlling and bossing the midfield for us, after learning through ETH MasterClass lessons this summer.
 
sglowrider said:
You cant compare it with the clubs that have had the right structure in place and managers who have been there for 4yrs or more. They already know what they need. Its only an issue of topping up or replacing the ageing players.

You only have to go back and look at what they did in their first 18-24 months. They fumbled as expected -- and we had plenty here who was pronouncing them as failures back then.

Apples and oranges. If you can stop comparing against established managers/structures things will look a bit more reasonable and not as chaotic as it seems.

Let's see if Liverpool or City will look so ''well run'' after the current managers leave and their next managers go through the growing pains like ours. The only exception would be Chelsea which seems to have an excellent back-end structure in place allowing for the manager's tenure like a revolving door. Not sure we want to go down that route.
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I know this does make a lot of sense, and we will need more time to get things back on track. But I just feel tired we will have to wait maybe another summer to get more ready for it. I feel next season would be experimental and we may have to accept ending up another season without top 4 finish. I hope we could act lot quicker and stay competitive sooner rather than later.
 
largelyworried said:
Suppose our first choice right back is 30M and our second choice is 20M. If we limit our budget and simply buy our second choice, and then De Jong ends up only costing 70M, it means we missed out on the chance of buying our first choice.
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You are telling me if we pay the maximum of what Barcelona is asking right now(80M), we wont have any money left to buy a SINGLE first choice player in any other positions? If so, we are fecked anyway :lol:
 
RedRonaldo said:
I think the thing is, most of us fans here, have no faith that our shite players are able to suddenly turn around and play dominating football under ETH, after the preseason training. We definitely need to bring in a lot of quality elsewhere who could fit into ETH football like a glove. Imaging relying on the likes of McFred capable of controlling and bossing the midfield for us, after learning through ETH MasterClass lessons this summer.
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Whoever we sign, the players that we have are fundamental to anything we hope to achieve. Fans should be just as concerned about whether Ten Hag can get our current players playing better. I do understand the psychology of almost ‘moving on’ from this lot, which has built the desire for signings even more (many fans would possibly change the entire XI if they could), but we need the current lot to be better, and while it may not be as ‘exciting’ - pre-season with ETH is just as important for them.
 
mazhar13 said:
On the bolded part, he is right; we have yet to submit a formal offer to Barcelona. We've just been sending out feelers to them to get an idea of what will work and what won't just like many of the other clubs around us.
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sglowrider said:
That's what the roles of the intermediaries are for. The clubs don't need to officially engage formally until you get down to the final details, and before signing. Its an iterative spiral initially by the intermediaries or agents -- and then there is a cross-over point to discussions/negotiations between the clubs.

Nothing new here to see.
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Basically why I prefer to see the "clubs are in talks" rumors as opposed to dismissing that a club is interested because there's been no "official" contact. It's a bit misleading because most simple folks like me aren't concerned with that nuance. If they're using intermediates, if the manager has spoken to the player , if there's been a phone call between directors that's all enough for me.

So basically seeing that kind of detail emphasizes after Arnold says we're working on the deal is just ...what's the phrase...pissing on our cornflakes. Whether intended to annoy or not pedantics have really amplified the pessimism on our transfer dealings.
 
Rozay said:
Whoever we sign, the players that we have are fundamental to anything we hope to achieve. Fans should be just as concerned about whether Ten Hag can get our current players playing better. I do understand the psychology of almost ‘moving on’ from this lot, which has built the desire for signings even more (many fans would possibly change the entire XI if they could), but we need the current lot to be better, and while it may not be as ‘exciting’ - pre-season with ETH is just as important for them.
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I honestly don’t care about any big signings at all this summer. I simply lost all my faith on our players after last season shite show. I hope we could get some cheap “money ball” type of signings who are “more fit” to play the way ETH wants.
 
RedRonaldo said:
I know this does make a lot of sense, and we will need more time to get things back on track. But I just feel tired we will have to wait maybe another summer to get more ready for it. I feel next season would be experimental and we may have to accept ending up another season without top 4 finish. I hope we could act lot quicker and stay competitive sooner rather than later.
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Next season will be developmental and hopefully not experimental!!! ;)

It's a new era. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
 
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