Unless you get a cut of the money saved on this transfer, I could give two fecks how much money the club saves. Saving £20 to £25 million doesn’t really move the dial for me or most supporters.
Jadon Sancho | £72.9M fee agreed
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Unless you get a cut of the money saved on this transfer, I could give two fecks how much money the club saves. Saving £20 to £25 million doesn’t really move the dial for me or most supporters.
As the biggest muppet in this thread last summer in retrospect the club massively got it right. It wasn't handled well, and it made everyone look a bit silly, but not paying that money last year was right. Some like yourself just want to be angry though.
By your definition every single club in the world lacks ambition. Havertz and Dias were the only ones in the PL that crossed the 50M mark and even they are nowhere near the 120M that Dortmund wanted.
I mean age only matters up to a point. There's lot of young talents that never improved. Neymar, Bale, Ronaldo all had breakout seasons in the ages of 20-23 when they turned into monsters. Will we see the same thing from Sancho in the next season or two? It's unlikely, if anything he's looked worse this past year than in the previous 2. Plus he's just not as either technically gifted as Neymar, or doesn't have the pace and acceleration of the other 2.
The reason I mention Mikhi and Kagawa is because I think talent wise he's closer to them than he is to the other 3. As I say though a lot depends on the next 2 seasons and if Sancho can improve his performance in a tougher league. A pretty big gamble for 90m.
I disagree, we need move creativity in the team against teams that park the bus, Sancho is ideal as he can play 7, 10 & 11 giving us lots of options.
It is a bit baffling that people still think our attack shouldn't be a priority still with the amount of toothless displays we put in last season. But oh well, this place never learns. If we went into next season strengthening other areas, and living the attack as it is, I'd not be confident going into next season.
The sad fact is we've got many areas that desperately need improvement.
The sad fact is we've got many areas that desperately need improvement.
More like because three of them played for Dortmund
stats wise they arent even remotely close, Mhki has only had 1 great season where he scored 20 goals for Dortmund while Kagawa was never a prolific goalscorer or assist maker for Dortmund. Neither is their playing style even remotely similar to sancho. Mhki and Kagawa are more like No. 10 who play centrally, while sancho is at best in the wide positions, either from the right or left flank. IF only international friendly match means something we might get 50% discount from Dortmund for sancho after yesterday. RW, DM, CB. And that would be a perfect window.
Yeah sure, I mean that's down to interpretation, most pundits and fans refer to them as four 'top strikers.' Keane mentioned this the other day on Sky when somebody questioned his opinion that we should sign Grealish, they said we already have Rasford on the left, Keano mentioned the four 'top strikers' in the 99 team and that a top team has options and effective options.
We don't need four players for every position on the pitch but Sancho and Amad for the RW would be fine, imo at least. Otherwise what if Sancho gets injured? Mata or James? No thanks (and I quite like those players) because you won't win the league with poor cover. It's why we've improved for large parts of the season only to dip in form massively whenever forced to rotate.
CB, DM, RW and ST are the problem areas. We definitely need a top level CB to partner Maguire, we definitely need a top level (ACTUAL) DM because Matic is done, we definitely need Sancho. So in theory (imo) Ole is three signings away from completing his rebuild (if you discount the ST position and put faith in Greenwood.)
I think we've improved the overall squad quality and style-wise we are in a vastly improved place for what the majority of fans want to see from a United team and in relation to where we want to be eventually - it's a much better heading. Whether we have gotten the best out of the players is up for debate, comfortably second is not what I want but I suppose it's improvement. I'll back Ole until we go backwards, imo it's been slow but steady improvement. If a world class elite manager was waiting in the wings I would consider our options but that's not the case, so I stick with slow and steady improvement. I think most trust Ole at least on the rebuilding side of things, I want to see the club back him fully this summer and reassess things during the season.
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yeah that's the reality, I'm sure if fans had faith in this club to address every area that needs strengthening then there wouldn't be a problem but as it seems like we have to prioritise certain areas over others they'll obviously be debates over whether they're the right areas or not
Completely agree. It seems like more blind luck when we fashion a chance (through Bruno or Pogba), it's very rare you see us work chances as a -team- the way the other top sides do. We can wreck anyone on the counter of course.
I'm with you on this.
There are simply no excuse for Martial's poor form coming from 24 goals season.
Rashford was shocking, given the chances he had to finish this season.
Greenwood is growing into the role, but not enough.
Cavani in and out of the side.
Voiced out many times in this forum, if we buried our chances this season, we've gone places.
Sancho make sense, because Greenwood should be playing central next season.
I very much disagree. There is enough viable reasons to criticise our ownership and Woodward than thinking paying big money above market price and not being able to negotiate is a smart move.
You need to score more goals but for me the real question is this one:
Is the problem that the front four is not talented enough (or does not provide enough options)? Or is the real problem that United do not have tactics and players that can adequately support the front four (ie, the fullbacks and central midfielders).
Honestly, I think it is the latter. United regularly line up with two CMs that don't offer a lot in the final third, a RB that is a liability going forward, and a fantastic all-rounder LB who is decent in attack but not a truly elite threat down the left. You can have Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, and KDB as your front four and they will struggle to score goals against a well trained defense with 10 men behind the ball unless they are supported by other dangerous players - fullbacks who can put in a cross and combine well to overload the flanks, midfielders who can make a killer pass to break the lines or late runs into the box, etc.
I think if you bought a new CB and CDM that were elite athletes and defenders in space - who could give Ole the confidence to play higher risk football, to send more players forward and/or to play with Pogba in CM more often - you would do more for the attack than by buying a new RW.
We've probably only been able to sign Diallo because of the money saved on not signing Sancho last year as well.
Regardless of tactics we do need one more quality attacking player and Sancho would fit in perfectly. Cavani can’t start every game and on top has injury issues. All of Rashford, Martial and Pogba are regularly injured for around 3 months per season. This scenario has left us this season at times with only teenagers as attacking option on the bench. That was in games where even James who shouldn’t be a starter anyway was already playing.
Compare this to City. De Bruyne is out for 2-3 months and no one actually notices it.
Obviously we can’t afford to stock pile players like City but one more attacking player is needed. And Sancho could rotate with all of Greenwood, Rashford, Bruno and Martial.
Of course we need a DM as well and ideally a CB but we need Sancho as much.
We can wreck anyone on the counter, same applied to other teams too, which is the problem. We may be good on the counter but that's what defensive teams play, if we are to win the league we need a more defined style of play, pegging the other team back. I haven't seen many games where we look really threatening without looking we can concede at any time.
The midfield is the issue IMO, alot of failed passes after spending 2 minutes building from the back means we have to keep rebuilding slowly from the back.
We need to work on ways to assert dominance.
Greenwood?
Sancho is a very good player so he would definitely improve you (as he would any team).
But honestly I don't think there is really that much difference between the talent of your front four options and City's:
Sterling, KDB, Foden, Bernardo Silva, Gabriel Jesus, Mahrez
vs
Bruno, Rashford, Cavani, Martial, Pogba, Greenwood
The pieces fit a little bit better for City but on talent I don't think United is very far behind.
The big difference is that they supplement those front four attackers with a CM like Gundogan (their leading scorer!) and a RB like Cancelo, who is really good and versatile going forward and can pop in all sorts of unexpected places. And the reason Pep can do it is that he has spent a gazillion pounds on defenders and a CDM in Rodri so that he can aggressively push Gundogan and Cancelo into the attack but still feel fairly secure at the back.
Didnt we do that last year and it turned out to be the new kit or something
I think (hope) the fella is taking the piss. It's an old myth that I thought had died a long time ago.
Many of these same people also decry our ability to break down low blocks, somehow not realising that the fact we haven't had a dedicated RW since 2013 doesn't exactly help in terms of team shape and balance in attack.
£75m+ £15m in achievable add-ons seems reasonable.
Like I said before in this thread, we haven't had a RW since Valencia was here. Mata strays central and never had the pace or agility to play there. Rashford can play there but is undoubtedly our best option on the left, so ideally he shouldn't. Greenwood is a finisher moreso than a provider.
You might argue that it really shouldn't matter and that the tactics should be able to resolve this but just in terms of the raw numbers everything is skewed towards the left and central areas, making the task of organising a defence against us much, much easier. We don't stretch teams because the personnel we have almost all to a man thrive in similar areas. The few times we do have someone on the right, we look much better. i.e. Rashford in the CL group stages against Istanbul and PSG at home. However, that comes at the cost of a performance drop off in the left channel as no one else in the team has as strong an on-field relationship with Shaw than Rashford, and Rashford himself isn't really much more than a presence on the right, as opposed to the devilish threat he provides when he runs in off that channel off the ball, or cuts in on the ball.
Moreover, the profile of our attackers are all predominantly focused on goal scoring rather than the blend of scoring and creation that it should be. Martial and Rashford can do both, but are much more focused on scoring. Mata is a creator but from central areas. Bruno is a dual threat with both. Greenwood is a pure finisher through and through. Likewise Cavani.
The only create-first player we have within that forward line is arguably Amad and he's still at least a season or so away from being able to contribute seriously to the team. Sancho is of a similar ilk to Amad and if we get him, we would be able to deploy a balanced team of both creators and scorers. e.g.:
Scorer (Rashford) - Creator (Bruno) - Creator (Sancho)
------------------------------- Scorer (Cavani) ----------------------------
It'll bring out the best in the rest of the attack because the opposition now wouldn't need to be solely focused on the Bruno-Rashford-Shaw dynamic, but would have to give equally serious thought to the right flank, which naturally stretches the field from the opposition and will open up more spaces for Rashford, Bruno and Cavani to do what they do best. AWB will also continue his improvement as he will finally have a consistent presence ahead of him, giving him the chance to interplay with the attackers, rather than being the spare man which he often was. He's the sort of RB who prefers having two or three passing options ahead of him so that he can utilise his clever darting runs off the ball, and even in difficult circumstances his game in an attacking sense really started to come through towards the end of the season. I think he's going to surprise a fair few next season if Sancho comes.
The article doesn't make any sense. These journalists don't know how to use £s and €s.
It's about balance moreso than talent. City's is perfectly balanced with multiple options in terms of creation and goalscoring. We currently don't have that balance.
All the news coming out is very positive, but it just reminds me of last season when it was positivity non stop until Dortmund came out and said no
This was the peak from last year:
This was the peak from last year:
I agree but there are other differences as well. Cavani, Rashford, Greenwood and Martial are / were all strikers. They are immensely talented and very good players but are not as creative as Sancho. Plus Cavani will only be here for one more year and no one knows what happens with Pogba. Again we do need someone like Sancho. He would just give us more and different options in attack. And now Aguero has gone City will most likely sign 1-2 more attacking players anyway.
This doesn’t mean we don’t need to strengthen in other areas, we can buy Sancho plus a couple of cheaper players for the other positions especially if we sell a couple of players.
Need to get it done quickly - they won't countenance the sale of their two best players in the same window, so whoever gets in there first out of us (Sancho) and Chesea (Haaland) likely screws the other over (for this summer at least).
Yes. He is young and if he stays for 10 years that is ca 9m per year in transfer fee.
How can you infer anger from my posts? It was a lack of ambition, end of. Unless you’re on the United payroll or own a substantial amount of shares, why do you care if the club who are a cash cow save money? Sancho couldve been a difference maker, maybe we win a trophy or make the title race closer this season. Maybe the move happens this season, it damn well should, but no guarantees of that either.
I reckon the negotiations are going to be on the payment schedule. Dortmund would want more upfront and United would like to backload the cash commitments for similar reasons. Both would want more cash on hand right now to complete other transfers as cash flow is hard in this economy.
We win.
You’re misunderstood. Dortmund have set the RRP and the date and it’s up to us to meet that.
1. If we gave into Dortmund’s demands without the possibility of negotiations we would set ourselves up in very bad negotiation positions for other players. Not only last year, but the years to come. The only club in the world that just buys players from a randomly set price without negotiating. Not very smart.
2. We don’t have an endless amount of money to use in the transfer market. We have by all accounts a fixed budget with sales from players on top. If we overpay like this consistently it would make us not being able to afford players in other positions where we also are in dire need of strengthening.
Sounds like one of those made up names where they attribute an iffy story to a fake journo. Another SunSport exclusive from James Anglefart or Steve Pipethorn.
Related to Rowdy Roddy Piper
You can still negotiate and try to get a better deal. Dortmund likely will not lower the price (much) but might be open to some payment schedule/bonus payments.
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