Hello everyone, I am new to this forum although I have been reading it for a long time, since I am a great fan of international football and Premier League in particular.
I am Italian and from an international perspective is surprising to see how a team which is simply perfect in managing the revenues side and has become the world reference from this point of view, on the spending side has wasted an enormous amount of money without being able to build a squad better than the Juventus one (which has significantly lower revenues), nor winning anything important since Sir Alex retirement.
Let me summarize the main points I find incredible to believe:
1. In the last 6 seasons (since Ferguson retirement in summer 2013) you have spent over EUR 600 mn on
net transfers. Let’s assume that in the squad of 2013 there was just De Gea and nobody else (which is obviously not the case) and you had to build a team from the scratch: this is a sum which would have been more than enough to build a team able to compete for the Champions league, also considering that transfer fees were significantly lower until 2016. Unfortunately, this is not possible if you spend approx. EUR 445 on the players below (I have restricted the list only to players still at Man Utd).
Mata 45
Fellaini 33
Shaw 37
Herrera 36
Rojo 20
Martial 60
Darmian 18
Lukaku 84
Lidendof 35
Fred 59
Dalot 22
(all figures are in EUR)
Probably none of the one in the list above would be a starter in Real Madrid, Barcelona or even Juventus. Martial is the only one which made sense, as a promising young star.
2. As a result, you have a very long squad full of overpaid “good players” or even bang average (I would include Jones, Smalling and Lingard in the list as well).
3. Team seems built up without a clear idea of what kind of football you want to play:
- - You have a world class winger (Sanchez) but you do not have another one (unless you adapt another player to play as a winger, like Martial or Mata)
- - You have one of the world best box-to-box midfielder but you do not have another one on the same level, so a three man midfield is compromised. And you force to play him as a defending midfielder, which is not his role and does not use his skills
- - You have 4/5 CB, none of which is a world class one. Maybe only Bailly deserves to be in Man Utd squad, but he cannot be the leader of the defense of a team with your ambitions
- - Martial is a “second striker”, which means he needs to play in a 2 men attack. This means that him and Sanchez (either a winger or a second striker himself) reflect different views on how you want to play.
- - Full back are either old or bang average, despite you have invested significant money on them in the past years
- The purchase of Fred is quite difficult to understand: he would hardly be a starter at Real or Barca and it is unclear where you would like him to play
4. In the last transfer market it was really difficult to understand your decisions:
- I do not understand why you were unable to buy a defender. You got stuck with over expensive options like Toby or Maguire and you did not sign De Vrij (which is a real world class CB, and also young) for free. Other option would have been one between: Miranda, Godin, Manolas, Benatia, Javi Martinez…
- Given the scarcity of world class strikers (and the fact that Lukaku is not one of them), it is unclear why you did not take advantage of the release clause of approx. EUR 100mn Icardi had up until July (by selling Lukaku, net spending would have been minimal
- Similar reasoning applies to Milinkvic Savic. Given the scarcity of world class players, and your need to catch up with current top teams, when there is one available for sale it is necessary to get him. I believe that offloading 3/4 current “decent” players you have, would have allowed to make SMS purchase available.
All this said, I would like to hear your point of view as Man Utd fans, and why do you think there is such a huge difference between the fantastic management your club has had on the revenues side, and the disaster done on the technical and transfers one.
Look forward hearing from you!