Have we signed anyone yet? | Yes, with stupid tax

Status
Not open for further replies.
No doubt ETH will be made the scapegoat when the season starts to unravel. But the true reason will de due to a lack of investment from our parsimonious owners.

Parsimonious? Hardly.

They provided the money. £1bn+ over the last while. Only so long you’re going to throw bad money at a problem.
 
Parsimonious? Hardly.

They provided the money. £1bn+ over the last while. Only so long you’re going to throw bad money at a problem.

Learnt a knew word today, thanks. This is correct though, they're not cheap, just wildly incompetent at running a football club.
 
Parsimonious? Hardly.

They provided the money. £1bn+ over the last while. Only so long you’re going to throw bad money at a problem.

Got to correct you, our owners have provided $0 throughout their tenure. They used loans to buy the club and loaded it with debt and the money spent in the transfer market is revenue generated by the club, the owners having loaded debt onto the club have only ever taken money out as dividends they have put nothing in. Thanks to servicing the debt we can just about compete in the transfer market but we have no funds left for desperately needed renovations at our Stadium and pathetic facilities and budgets for our Academy and Women's teams. Criticize how the money has been spent in the transfer market all you want but don't give the owners a shred of credit whatsoever, they have done nothing but bleed the club dry from the moment they first latched on to the teat and they will never change.
 
Can totally see Lisandro going to Arsenal in the next week or so, and Ajax shutting up shop on outgoings this window.

They would definitely see us not picking up their best players in ETH's first window as a massive plus, and a statement of intent for future managerial moves.

The summer of discontent is well and truly setting in.
 
This is scary, City just get stronger and stronger and we dither.
 
Our club is a joke. Have we bought a gem after SAF?
https://www.football365.com/news/ranking-all-45-manchester-united-signings-since-ferguson-left

Bruno for sure, despite falling off in the last season.

Ronaldo has been a high quality signing, but arguably cost us much needed balance and long term building by not getting a DM or younger striker.

Ibrahimovic a great freebie.

All the above were obvious choices. So I don't think we've scouted a developing winner for a while. Martial should have been, but even he was big money.
 
To be a fly on the wall when the players return for training.

Player 1: "Wow, you're still here?"
Player 2: "I know, right?"
 
The fact we cannot persuade a 30 year old guy who had a heart attack and is on a free to join us says it all. He is considering Brentford :lol:
This is how toxic the Glazers are.

Perhaps Arnold forgot to buy him a couple of pints.

I said the same thing and got a 2 day ban last week, free speech and saying it how it is isn't allowed these days.

Case in point is Rangnick. He was spot on and it was too easy for the club to leak bullshit stories about him being a dinosaur when in fact he's lightyears ahead of this club and even alot of the fans.
 
Seriously? Fecking relax.

We have also progressed in the FDJ deal. So there’s that.

Apparently ETH has disregarded the scouts targets and only wants his own


Yeah I wouldn't trust the same scouts who had numerous right backs scouted and came up with AWB.
 
I said the same thing and got a 2 day ban last week, free speech and saying it how it is isn't allowed these days.

Case in point is Rangnick. He was spot on and it was too easy for the club to leak bullshit stories about him being a dinosaur when in fact he's lightyears ahead of this club and even alot of the fans.

ETH would have loved working with Ralf.
The man is totally honest.
The Glazers want everyone to be lock step with them.

Erik must be rethinking the wisdom of him accepting the job.

With the way things are heading we will be lucky to get 6th place again.

The only way out for the club is the Glazer cancer to be removed.
The first 3 matches will show the trajectory for the season.

If it is as I expect it to be, the protests need to be direct. Match interruptions like the season before.
 
Our club is a joke. Have we bought a gem after SAF?

No we haven’t. The last brilliant off the radar signing we’ve made is Hernandez. Otherwise our scouting and ability to make smart and astute transfers has been no where to be seen the last decade.
 
I know that we are not all the same. Some are more optimistic, some are more realistic etc...but how someone can watch this transfer window and say that everything is ok, lets not panic? Murtough is doing awful job so far.
 
Even Forest and Bournemouth have signed players. I don't want to hear any more about what a wonderful breath of fresh air Murtough and Arnold are... same old bollox
 
Its evident that budget is not great however we've got enough money to make a couple of signings. Many United fans (including at redcafe) are reluctant to face the other huge elephant in the room. The club is badly managed, the people on top might have the heart in the right place but they certainly lack the experience to do their job and its evident time and time again. For example we kept Ole for far too long, we went on bringing in Rangnick a man who hasn't managed a club for around 7-8 years out of 10 and then we went on sacking him as consultant despite no one at the club has any experience in dealing for top quality players. If United are truly rushing to sign Tom Keane, during the busiest part of the year then that stinks of despair and quite frankly panic. I understand that others had managed to make due with people from the inside or inexperienced people. However we simply lack the quality to do so.
 
The next week or so is massive. I can just about justify not signing anyone yet as all of the players we are linked to had international commitments and so would not be arriving for pre-season until July anyway. I will officially start to lose the plot if we don't have significant business done by the time we head out on tour as I don't see how ETH can plan for a season without knowing who he is going to have available. FDJ is a bit of an exception, that can take a little longer as I think he could fit in fairly seamlessly without too much pre-season work due to his familiarity but besides that we have to give the new manager a chance to integrate his new signings.

I do think Eriksen will make his decision in the next couple of days and I have to believe he would choose the option of joining a club that can offer European football and a more realistic chance of silverware over his understandable desire to show loyalty to Brentford. If that deal could be done plus 1 or 2 others in the next 10 days then I will begin to feel optimistic but right now the silence is deafening.
 
closely followed by

Player 1: “Wow, you’re still crap?”
Player 2,3,4,5… : “I know, right?”
ETH: "Let's take a moment to allow the new players to introduce themselves."

(Awkward silence)

ETH: "Alright, who wants to pretend to be FDJ?"
 
Parsimonious? Hardly.

They provided the money. £1bn+ over the last while. Only so long you’re going to throw bad money at a problem.

What is this nonsense they have provided nothing but 1 billion of the clubs own generated money, 1.5 billion of that money has been taken out by them since 2005 all while saddling it with 500 million in debt and climbing secured on its own stable equity.

Absolutely nothing highlights these parasites more than the 11 million in dividends while the club is currently haggling over that much for FDJ, they just don't care win or lose the club is a piggy bank. Combine those dividends with interest payments and they cost us 40m a year for the pleasure of their ownership.

Edit: Agree the money has been poorly handled though of course it has and its not like they don't take a share of the blame. They knew nothing about football, fair enough, they still put their trust in bankers like Woodward as a reward for gaining them a world renowned asset for essentially nothing.
 
Last edited:
The new signings aren't needed for the early part of pre season anyway because that's just fitness work and not tactical stuff.....

Guess the fans need to land themselves at someone's house again.

What's the point? He'll probably go for a pint with them, he'll say the same things (most of things do seem honest tbh like for example that there's money to spend and that the CEO shouldn't be involved in deals) and we'll still in square 1. At this point its too late to improve in the Summer, which tbf We're trying to do by signing Keane. However I fully expect Arnold to investigate on what went wrong and to go full Rain of Castamere afterwards
 
Seriously? Fecking relax.

We have also progressed in the FDJ deal. So there’s that.

Apparently ETH has disregarded the scouts targets and only wants his own


I find that difficult to believe. ETH is a former Ajax manager. He's used to compromise on targets and to work alongside with a DOF. What I do suspect is that United's board has not been able to deliver. Maybe they promised ETH to bring the players he wanted only to learn that they lack the experience to do that especially on a limited budget.
 
What is the reason why we haven’t got anything done yet? Incompetence by those in charge? Players just genuinely not wanting to get involved in this circus? I fear for the club long term I really do.
 
What is the reason why we haven’t got anything done yet? Incompetence by those in charge? Players just genuinely not wanting to get involved in this circus? I fear for the club long term I really do.
We've been a poorly run football club for ages. I still hold out some hope that the new faces can do a good job but it's difficult to have faith when we seem so cumbersome in the market. We should have had the biggest response this summer being England's biggest club which came off a horrific season yet we seem to be the most pedestrian thus far.
 
The new signings aren't needed for the early part of pre season anyway because that's just fitness work and not tactical stuff.....

Guess the fans need to land themselves at someone's house again.

What's the point? He'll probably go for a pint with them, he'll say the same things (most of things do seem honest tbh like for example that there's money to spend and that the CEO shouldn't be involved in deals) and we'll still in square 1. At this point its too late to improve in the Summer, which tbf We're trying to do by signing Keane. However I fully expect Arnold to investigate on what went wrong and to go full Rain of Castamere afterwards
Fecking hell lads, trying to get yourselves banned?

The fact we cannot persuade a 30 year old guy who had a heart attack and is on a free to join us says it all. He is considering Brentford :lol:
This is how toxic the Glazers are.

Perhaps Arnold forgot to buy him a couple of pints.
It’s not as simple as “it’s Brentford” though is it, this is a rather unique situation.
 
Fecking hell lads, trying to get yourselves banned?


It’s not as simple as “it’s Brentford” though is it, this is a rather unique situation.

Where have I said that I agree with fans visiting Arnold? What I said is that doing that is pretty pointless which kind of suggest that people shouldn't do that in the first place.
 
It’s not as simple as “it’s Brentford” though is it, this is a rather unique situation.
If it was Spurs, City or Liverpool he would have turned Brentford down in a heartbeat. The current state of our club and the ownership does factor into it in my opinion.
 
We've been a poorly run football club for ages. I still hold out some hope that the new faces can do a good job but it's difficult to have faith when we seem so cumbersome in the market. We should have had the biggest response this summer being England's biggest club which came off a horrific season yet we seem to be the most pedestrian thus far.

"Poorly run" doesn't have to mean utterly incapable of signing anybody at all. We've signed plenty of players throughout this decade. It's definitely unusual and very worrying that in possibly our most important transfer window in the history of the club, we're doing absolutely nothing while all our competitors are busily strengthening with top-shelf signings. How long until somebody else grabs our targets from under our nose while we haggle back and forth with Barcelona for a sum that we routinely piss away on random no-name loans like Ighalo? The longer we wait, the worse our transfer window will be as the options dwindle one by one. It's very troubling. I wonder if there's some exact reason which we aren't aware of. I wouldn't just chalk it down to being poorly run, because we have been for ages and this is a whole new level of highly warranted concern.

While it's not the first time we look silly in the transfer window, it has never been this dire before, and this is the one time that we need to get some good business done or else literally put the actual future of the club in jeopardy. If we botch this transfer window, we're fecked for real. We're at the very end of the timespan in which we can stay afloat solely by merit of being Manchester United. If things don't turn around and start to improve this very next season, we're likely facing several decades in the wilderness ala Liverpool. Anyone with their finger on the pulse of football can see that one more season in the dumps will fully and completely topple us from the list of elite clubs, and the privileges in the market that come with that.

Transfer fees are escalating at such a rapid pace that even this club's high revenue won't be enough to compete against the sugar daddy clubs and Real Madrid in the market unless the football starts to improve immediately. If we don't start to consistently qualify for the CL and reach cup finals very soon, we won't be financially competitive. It's what happened to Arsenal, it's just taking a little longer for us because our financial level was always higher than theirs, but it's moving in that direction. We must become a club that can drop £100m on the main transfer target every summer, because that's what our competitors are doing. We can't spend weeks and weeks trying to haggle our way down to €65m on our #1 transfer target.
 
Last edited:
The situation is not critical but getting a bit concerning. I think all of us can see that FDJ will be the key signing and that is fine. But this key signing will impact the rest of the transfer budget and the time to get the other deals over the line. Now, if we don’t get FDJ and end up with very average signings (probably 3 max) at the end of the transfer window, then we will know despite all the rhetoric about new culture and structure, nothing has really changed.
 
This is scary, City just get stronger and stronger and we dither.

Its strange that you guys are still comparing our business with clubs like Citi/Pool. As far as I know we should start comparing ourselves with clubs like WestHam/Everton/Lecester.
 
Its strange that you guys are still comparing our business with clubs like Citi/Pool. As far as I know we should start comparing ourselves with clubs like WestHam/Everton/Lecester.

That's nonsense. We routinely sign players for the kind of money that Barcelona are asking for FDJ, just about every summer. We've been big spenders for a decade, it just hasn't been spent well. We are not comparable to clubs like West Ham, Everton or Leicester in any sense except perhaps for our placement in the league table.
 
Where have I said that I agree with fans visiting Arnold? What I said is that doing that is pretty pointless which kind of suggest that people shouldn't do that in the first place.
Ok, my bad.

I read it as there was an implication that you agreed with it but it would only lead to the result what happened the other day.
 
No doubt ETH will be made the scapegoat when the season starts to unravel. But the true reason will de due to a lack of investment from our parsimonious owners.
We have the higest net spend in the premier league over the last decade. It’s not the amount of investment that has been the issue it the post Fergie years. it’s how it has been invested.

The Glazers main crime when it comes to football aspects of the club has been not ensuring the people at the top know what they are doing. Somthing that still seems to be the case going into another summer I’ll prepared and scraping around to make deals while other clubs have firm plans and make decisive decisions.
 
If it was Spurs, City or Liverpool he would have turned Brentford down in a heartbeat. The current state of our club and the ownership does factor into it in my opinion.
Thie biggest factor is the same as Timbers. World Cup year and need to be playing most of the time, although I would expect even 50% to be enough for Erikson to be in the Danish squad!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.