Maybe. I’m actually confident the De Jong deal will get done and I think the club needs a lot more credit. The suggestion that things were too far gone just reminded me of Mikel.
People complain about the reputation we gained in the market under Woodward and the so called United tax. However, nobody is giving the club’s new regime consideration for operating with that terrible starting hand.
The thing that gives me most confidence Is the Malacia and Martinez deals/rumours. The suggestions that the club let others feel out the market price of players and then swooped after the United tax couldn’t be overplayed is really promising.
If four of the deals come off (Eriksen, Malacia, De Jong, Martinez let’s say) at good prices then this may be the window the club begins to reset its reputation and could be a really good start for Arnold.
Anyone undermining the difficulty of the job this summer should take a moment to think.
I agree. People were expecting us to go guns blazing on as many deals as we could find to rectify the season we just had. We did this before in 2014, buying lots of players, all of whom turned out to be worse than who we had replaced them for. The truth is, we actually have good pieces already within the squad, our bad season was due to poor management across the board and lacking in a few areas of the pitch which made it difficult for other positions to perform as well as they could.
The likes of DDG, Varane, Maguire, Shaw, Bruno, Sancho, Rashford and Ronaldo have previously shown their abilities on a world stage and would most likely be doing pretty well at a club with better squad planning that we have hade. Maguire and Varane have struggled with not being protected by their full backs and central midfielders whilst also needing to hold onto the ball longer due to poor positioning from our full backs and midfielders. DDG has had to deal with threat after threat toward his goal, yet some fans would have you believe that if he came off his line more, we would have less problems. Bruno and Ronaldo have both had periods within this team that you could argue that they were creating chances and goals out of nothing, that with more support, more time and more space they would be tearing teams apart. Rashford and Sancho have both struggled at time to get into the games, as they are not presented with the ball in opportune positions like their counterparts at City and Liverpool. They have also not been afforded periods of bad form as the depth on the flanks and in forward positions have not been great.
The problem we have previously had in the market has been our approach. We have spent the majority of our transfer kitty on players that we did not have a successful plan on how to used them.
Our major signings since Sir Alex left have been: Pogba, Lukaku, Di Maria, Varane, Maguire, Sancho and Alexis Sanchez.
Pogba was signed without knowing exactly what we wanted to do with him. There was an idea that we would mould him into what we wanted, that never happened.
Lukaku was signed by Mou as a target man despite the fact that he did not want to play that role and he did not have the touch to function as such in the premier league.
Di Maria was signed by a manager who didn't even want to use a winger in his first 6 months here. He was barely used in the position he was most used to and shown very little respect by the manager.
Maguire was overpriced and was bought in a moment of desperation to plug the gap in the defence after our worst defensive season in league history.
Alexis Sanchez was bought to bolster our attack, yet hadn't played well in the six months prior to arriving with us. He had gone through injuries and was aging, so it came to not too much surprise that his game, which was highly dependent on physicality, fell off a cliff.
The jury is still out on Sancho and Varane.
With FDJ, we would at the very least be getting a player who can the defence and midfield. He has good touches, has a quick turn and can pass the ball forward consistently well. These sound simple enough, but it's the difference between taking 10 minutes to build an attack and 1 or 2 minutes to do so. He would provide Maguire and Varane with consistent options to pass the ball to and has the positioning awareness to know when to get into a three or push up. Furthermore, he knows how to play as the deepest midfielder and has the positional sense to limit counter attacks. These are two of the biggest issues in our team. Malacia would give us an athletic, attacking full back to bring more energy and athleticism to the team; this would help us in our recovery of the ball in the middle of the park and our ability to attack the flanks more consistently.