The £80m for Maguire was market price for what was available at the time.
The £80m became market price, because that's what we ended up paying. I don't buy that CB prices were somehow higher that year because of availability. Didn't De Ligt go to Juve for the same price in the same window? Infinitely better buy.
He's not the best in the world, but he's very solid and reliable.
Absolutely, 50m at most?
We didn't have any proper long-term captains in the club (evidenced by Young being picked after Valencia that summer), and I'm certain Ole always planned to make him captain by the following summer (but Young moved in Jan), this to help change the culture in the club/locker room. There's lotsa reports on Maguire doing lots behind the scenes for the culture, including making everyone demand more from themselves for punctuality and professionality for showing up for training, meetings etc.
Nothing about him screams captain to me. Happy he's been a positive influence in the dressing room. Did he need an armband for that? I don't think the captaincy is important anyway. The true leader on the pitch usually isn't the captain. It's a bad reason to pay premium.
He's English (and a national team regular), meaning he qualifies as homegrown, and we need at least 8 senior (over 21) players in the squad that are homegrown or we can't have 25 squad players. We were about to get rid of several other homegrown players, and we needed to refill with some solid players part of the core that was likely to stay at the club for 5-10 years. (Another reason why AWB was favored.)
It's true that homegrown players are more expensive, making them overpriced. How about we let all the characterless clubs with sugar daddies/states fight over the James Milners of this world?
We are nowhere near struggling to meet homegrown requirements. There's cheaper solutions to that problem than overpaying by 30m.
And he was available that summer, so we needed him then to get the project started to start working on the team culture.
Had Maguire been dutch like Ake I'm sure he would have gone for 40-50m. But he had those other factors that meant that Leicester could charge more in this limited supply and demand market.
Ake is homegrown too (moved to Chelsea as a teen), that's why he was also overpriced. Paying a footballer more because of his nationality is bad business.
Over time he'll definitely be worth the fee.
He won't. I wish it were true. He might very well be part of a title winning team eventually. I don't believe he will hold us back, but he won't add anything to our chances either. Very good in the air, comfy on the ball, but nothing special for utd.