There are a few really good young English players who’d have been much better and infinitely cheaper signings for us with the benefit of hindsight. Eze, Olise, Gibbs-White to name three. Huge transfers rarely work out. Even more rarely from the BL. Doesn’t mean the BL is a bad source of players, just means I would hardly ever spend big money on a BL player unless they were unequivocally brilliant. Haaland, De Bruyne, Lewandowski level.
Otherwise I’d be capping my spend on that league to 40ishM. Wirtz looks a big talent from there, but I’d want a heavily incentivised deal to sign him. Like 40-50m up front and the rest in bonuses. Only BL player I’d spend big on right now, who looks a sure bet for any league in the world, is Musiala.
TBF there were plenty of warning signs that most of us wanted to ignore. Including me. Was signed to play right wing, because that was our problem position, despite everyone knowing deep down he preferred the left. Never, ever possessed any extraordinary physical gifts, in that he wasn’t rapier quick or strong. Just a moderately quick acceleration. If you looked at a lot of his highlights from the BL, he tallied up great numbers taking advantage of space he wouldn’t be afforded in the PL, especially playing for a top team against low blocks. He also had lots of fitness issues at Dortmund, not so much with injuries, but returning from the off season in poor shape, being overweight etc. He was also admonished a few times for poor discipline and time keeping.
These were all things we chose to ignore, because we’ve been desperate for a revival of our fortunes for so long.
He’s clearly better than what he’s shown, but I don’t think he was ever anywhere near as good as any of us thought. A big reason he rarely, ever stood out for England, even at his peak Dortmund confidence days.
Another shit transfer where the club hasn’t done its homework or used a data driven approach. We can file Antony under that category too. Players who were signed under the “eye test”, by popular demand, or due to manager familiarity. I bet if you look at the underlying data of both, in metrics that would apply to the PL, the data would show them to be shit potential transfers.
Three years ago I think it was the Athletic who used a data driven analysis to analyse the gaps in United’s on field performance and then tried to match them with players whose on field metrics matched the needs of the team. The two names that stood out head and shoulders above the rest, in terms of being transformative in how we’d play were Camavinga and Frimpong. Who were both available at very reasonable fees at the time.
It wasn’t too long after we ignored what the data was telling us, by instead signing Sancho, Varane and Ronaldo; that it fell apart. At that point, another data driven analysis by the hugely unpopular Rangnick, suggested we buy Enzo Fernandez (available for <20m), Nkunku, Gvardiol (would’ve cost about what Casemiro cost at that time), Julian Alvarez (25m) and Luis Diaz. So there is quite literally evidence out there in the public domain that we could’ve had a team with Gvardiol, Frimpong, Camavinga, Enzo, Nkunku, Diaz and Alvarez for about what Sancho, Antony, Mount and Varane cost. We also wouldn’t have had to spend 65m on a 30 year old DM either.
And this is just shit in the public domain. Imagine how bad it is behind the scenes. The players we’ve ignored, the recommendations we’ve brushed aside. We set up a whole DoF style system under a proven DoF in Rangnick and then ditched it because of a bad six months as coach and on the advice of the new manager who wanted full control. Which is the antithesis of the whole purpose of having a DoF. This club just doesn’t have any joined up thinking.
Frankly, if United are interested in a player under the Glazers, I just assume that he is overpriced shit at this point.
