Manchester United name John Murtough as Football Director and Darren Fletcher as Technical Director

ghagua said:
I would keep De Gea over Henderson. I know everyone praises Henderson, but I just don't feel confident he is the keeper we need. I would Add Bailly to that list. They have all had their chances and failed to take advantage of their opportunities.
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Honestly I’d continue with both. Henderson does seem to give unreliable vibes on certain occasions but any young keeper does. He just needs some time to settle in and having two and not one good CB in front him will help.

I think they both help keep each other on their toes and even if Henderson may get a bit frustrated over playing time, so be it. If he wants to be the #1 at a club like ours over others than he needs to handle the pressure and be patient. By the time he’s more mature in a year or twos time, DDG will be leaving or have left by then and the throne will be his for the taking.
 
Red Company said:
Not sure that’s accurate. It’s very bloated.

Let’s start with a breakdown of the squad.

Our current starting 11 looks something like: DDG, Shaw, Maguire, Varane, AWB, Pogba, McT, Bruno, Rashford, Cavani & Sancho.

Our ideal bench looks like: Henderson, Lindelof, Telles, Fred, VDB, Greenwood & Martial.

That leaves us with the next best bench options: Heaton, Amad, one of Bailly/Tuanzebe, one of Dalot/Williams, Matic.

That leaves us with the following players:
Grant, Jones, Pereira, Mata, Lingard, one of Bailly/Tuanzebe, one of Dalot/Williams.

So we now have 7 players we need to move on immediately. Some of whom are on highly debatable contracts (Jones, Lingard, Bailly & Matic) which is really alarming considering they’re literally just deadwood. So I don’t know how many players would make the word ‘bloated’ seem fair to you but numerically & financially combined, it definitely suits our deadwood.

By the way - these are just the immediate players we need to get rid of. There’s further planning required about how to get rid of some other players as well once we have to start integrating more of our youth players into the first team which aren’t that far off. Mejbri, Elanga, Laird, Pellistri & maybe Mengi too if I was to name a few.

However for now I’d be happy just to get started with the 7 players I mentioned. Even these will ideally take this window and another 1/2 to get moved on.

Edit: on a side note - the real mission for Murtough & team begins now.

We need to replace quite a few players apart from the deadwood that needs to go. Players like Pogba, Martial, one or both of DDG/Hendo, AWB, Fred & McT all have a lot to prove yet.

We also need another striker once Cavani goes and I’m really looking forward to signing Haaland considering how close he apparently is to Ole as well as test our new DOF etc to see if they can really pull his signing off.
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This analysis all assumes on a low number of injuries and a squad that will rarely have two injuries to, say, central defenders. Ideally what you really want is two players in every position, giving you 22 players, then adding on one person you will be confident putting onto the bench should two players in one position be injured.

GK (1+1+1): Henderson, De Gea, Heaton. Sell Grant.
CD (2+2+1): Varane, Maguire, Lindelof, Bailly, Tuanzabe. Sell Jones, I'll agree with that.
F/WB (2+2+1): AWB, Shaw, Williams, Telles, Williams. Sell Dalot, I'll agree with that.
MF (3+3+1): Pogba, Fernandes, McTominay, Fred, Matic, Van den Beek, Mata. Sell Pereira, I'll agree with that.
FW (3+3+1): Sancho, Rashford, Cavani, Greenwood, Martial, Lingard, James.

After that, we're down to selling only if we have a suitable replacement via youth or transfer. I don't think we need to sell seven players. Just four. And two of them won't be big sales at all. I don't mind if we sell someone if we think someone is ready to step in though, idk how Garner is doing these days.
 
Loony BoB said:
This analysis all assumes on a low number of injuries and a squad that will rarely have two injuries to, say, central defenders. Ideally what you really want is two players in every position, giving you 22 players, then adding on one person you will be confident putting onto the bench should two players in one position be injured.

GK (1+1+1): Henderson, De Gea, Heaton. Sell Grant.
CD (2+2+1): Varane, Maguire, Lindelof, Bailly, Tuanzabe. Sell Jones, I'll agree with that.
F/WB (2+2+1): AWB, Shaw, Williams, Telles, Williams. Sell Dalot, I'll agree with that.
MF (3+3+1): Pogba, Fernandes, McTominay, Fred, Matic, Van den Beek, Mata. Sell Pereira, I'll agree with that.
FW (3+3+1): Sancho, Rashford, Cavani, Greenwood, Martial, Lingard, James.

After that, we're down to selling only if we have a suitable replacement via youth or transfer. I don't think we need to sell seven players. Just four. And two of them won't be big sales at all. I don't mind if we sell someone if we think someone is ready to step in though, idk how Garner is doing these days.
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Ah yes I’d forgotten about Garner. Also - I would not include Lingard in that list as we have Amad. And if we do include Garner I wouldn’t count Mata either. Technically Mata comes in the forwards/wide players list anyways and not in midfield. So that’s 6 players in my books.
 
JPRouve said:
His actual title was head of Football development, he was an executive, he was the only full time member of the football board. And the improvements predate his nomination as a DOF we have improved our recruitment since 2019. So if you link it to Murtough being a DOF, it's not just a coincidence it's fictitious. The club started to make sense because the manager makes sense, that I believe isn't a coincidence whatever people think about Ole, he is sensible.
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Makes sense? Clearly Last season was one of the many bad terrible summer strategy we have shown under Ed. Sancho was an impossible move but we were still persistent to embarrassed ourself and end up signed Cavani on the last week of the window who could be available long before we signed and he could have trained with us to regain his fitness and be ready for our first league game.

If we have the same summer transfer strategy now, we would be dragging this so long and signing Varane in August instead. The way how we work this summer has been much efficient and quicker, we don’t know what is going on behind the scene but what we do know is that we just recently made change by having Murtough as our DOF. It’s only fair to say that this recent change of structure has something to do with our improvement in this transfer summer strategy.
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
Makes sense? Clearly Last season was one of the many bad terrible summer strategy we have shown under Ed. Sancho was an impossible move but we were still persistent to embarrassed ourself and end up signed Cavani on the last week of the window who could be available long before we signed and he could have trained with us to regain his fitness and be ready for our first league game.

If we have the same summer transfer strategy now, we would be dragging this so long and signing Varane in August instead. The way how we work this summer has been much efficient and quicker, we don’t know what is going on behind the scene but what we do know is that we just recently made change by having Murtough as our DOF. It’s only fair to say that this recent change of structure has something to do with our improvement in this transfer summer strategy.
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I hope we had a better deal signing Cavani at later stages where he did not have any one else willing to pay his initial demands and joined us on our terms.
 
JPRouve said:
His actual title was head of Football development, he was an executive, he was the only full time member of the football board. And the improvements predate his nomination as a DOF we have improved our recruitment since 2019. So if you link it to Murtough being a DOF, it's not just a coincidence it's fictitious. The club started to make sense because the manager makes sense, that I believe isn't a coincidence whatever people think about Ole, he is sensible.
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Well last summer season's transfer window was quite bad and people didn't pin it on Ole(and rightly so). Ole can just help in identifying talents, the rest is done by the upper level.
 
Whoever is in charge of the signing or the structure that is in place is doing an exceptional work and I’m very excited for the future.
 
JPRouve said:
Which doesn't tell you that they are screwed, out of that you have a 30 years loan representing 575m. Which is mainly spent on infrastructures.
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I'd say it's rational to think they are focused on paying off debt/stadium renovation, rather than going out and buying players - they bought no one last year and according to their own sources, there are on a cost cutting drive. They're not screwed long term, or even mid term, but my response was to someone saying the reason we have got these players (bearing in mind we tried for Sancho previously) was Ole picking realistic targets and it's such a weird take, if anything the Sancho saga just proves how wrong that is. Financial situations have drastically changed for many clubs, United can exploit this to our own benefit.
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
Makes sense? Clearly Last season was one of the many bad terrible summer strategy we have shown under Ed. Sancho was an impossible move but we were still persistent to embarrassed ourself and end up signed Cavani on the last week of the window who could be available long before we signed and he could have trained with us to regain his fitness and be ready for our first league game.

If we have the same summer transfer strategy now, we would be dragging this so long and signing Varane in August instead. The way how we work this summer has been much efficient and quicker, we don’t know what is going on behind the scene but what we do know is that we just recently made change by having Murtough as our DOF. It’s only fair to say that this recent change of structure has something to do with our improvement in this transfer summer strategy.
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devil99 said:
I hope we had a better deal signing Cavani at later stages where he did not have any one else willing to pay his initial demands and joined us on our terms.
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Agreed. We could have signed Cavani earlier in the window but we got a better deal by signing him at the end.
 
devil99 said:
I hope we had a better deal signing Cavani at later stages where he did not have any one else willing to pay his initial demands and joined us on our terms.
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roseguy64 said:
Agreed. We could have signed Cavani earlier in the window but we got a better deal by signing him at the end.
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Should have signed Varane at the final week of the window so we can get a better deal then. :rolleyes:
 
Red Company said:
Not sure that’s accurate. It’s very bloated.

Let’s start with a breakdown of the squad.

Our current starting 11 looks something like: DDG, Shaw, Maguire, Varane, AWB, Pogba, McT, Bruno, Rashford, Cavani & Sancho.

Our ideal bench looks like: Henderson, Lindelof, Telles, Fred, VDB, Greenwood & Martial.

That leaves us with the next best bench options: Heaton, Amad, one of Bailly/Tuanzebe, one of Dalot/Williams, Matic.

That leaves us with the following players:
Grant, Jones, Pereira, Mata, Lingard, one of Bailly/Tuanzebe, one of Dalot/Williams.

So we now have 7 players we need to move on immediately. Some of whom are on highly debatable contracts (Jones, Lingard, Bailly & Matic) which is really alarming considering they’re literally just deadwood. So I don’t know how many players would make the word ‘bloated’ seem fair to you but numerically & financially combined, it definitely suits our deadwood.

By the way - these are just the immediate players we need to get rid of. There’s further planning required about how to get rid of some other players as well once we have to start integrating more of our youth players into the first team which aren’t that far off. Mejbri, Elanga, Laird, Pellistri & maybe Mengi too if I was to name a few.

However for now I’d be happy just to get started with the 7 players I mentioned. Even these will ideally take this window and another 1/2 to get moved on.

Edit: on a side note - the real mission for Murtough & team begins now.

We need to replace quite a few players apart from the deadwood that needs to go. Players like Pogba, Martial, one or both of DDG/Hendo, AWB, Fred & McT all have a lot to prove yet.

We also need another striker once Cavani goes and I’m really looking forward to signing Haaland considering how close he apparently is to Ole as well as test our new DOF etc to see if they can really pull his signing off.
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Look at the depth of City and Chelsea's squads. Its not numbers thats the issue its the quality. Outside of the deadwood most teams accumulate we arent that bloated. You ideally want two starters in every position with a few to spare for cover. Ideally 25 players who would start for most teams is what you want for a long season competing on all fronts.
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
Should have signed Varane at the final week of the window so we can get a better deal then. :rolleyes:
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How is Varane comparable to Cavani? Different situations. One was a straightforward transfer. The other was a player who had been out of contract for months who had previous agreements with clubs fall through and would have been well desperate to lower his demands to play for a big club.
 
roseguy64 said:
How is Varane comparable to Cavani? Different situations. One was a straightforward transfer. The other was a player who had been out of contract for months who had previous agreements with clubs fall through and would have been well desperate to lower his demands to play for a big club.
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Explain why Varane was a straightforward transfer?

We are still paying 200k p/w on Cavani's wages, how is that lowering his demand, that's the exact wages he had previously. :lol: ''better deal''
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
Explain why Varane was a straightforward transfer?

We are still paying 200k p/w on Cavani's wages, how is that lowering his demand, that's the exact wages he had previously. :lol: ''better deal''
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Varane was about as straightforward a transfer can get. We enquired in June, he seemed to want to come as soon as we enquired, Real waited till he was back from Euro’s/Holiday, he returned and they sold him.

Cavani lowered the wage demands he was throwing at clubs like Atletico and Benfica.
 
macheda14 said:
Varane was about as straightforward a transfer can get. We enquired in June, he seemed to want to come as soon as we enquired, Real waited till he was back from Euro’s/Holiday, he returned and they sold him.

Cavani lowered the wage demands he was throwing at clubs like Atletico and Benfica.
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It's called well prepared!! We were preparing this since June and know what we needed to do to prepare this. When transfer is being well prepared, it looked straight forward. When transfer is not well prepared, it becomes complicated.

Cavani's wages is still the same as what he earnt in PSG, he didn't lower his wages.
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
It's called well prepared!! We were preparing this since June and know what we needed to do to prepare this. When transfer is being well prepared, it looked straight forward. When transfer is not well prepared, it becomes complicated.

Cavani's wages is still the same as what he earnt in PSG, he didn't lower his wages.
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The news around his signing at the time is that Man Utd got him on less wages than either previously or what he wanted earlier in the transfer window. Believe what you want out of that.
 
roseguy64 said:
The news around his signing at the time is that Man Utd got him on less wages than either previously or what he wanted earlier in the transfer window. Believe what you want out of that.
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What news? You made it up right? Because 200k p/w was exactly his wages at PSG mate. Why are you still persistent to deny that is not lower. No fat chance Benfica would even pay player for 200k p/w in the first place.
 
KM said:
There's undoubtedly a clear strategy in this window which seemed to be lacking last season in the window.

And given this is Murtough's transfer window in the position of power, I think it's fair that he's been given some credit.

Also let's not Evra infamous interview where he said that a player said to him that United sent banker to convince him to play for United, that's where Flercher comes in.
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More like clear weaknesses exposed in the team, and obvious choices in the market to fill the gaps. Yes we're a bit early in the market but saying something that there is a clear upgrade in what we're doing is BS, we will have to wait next few windows to asses this. Also Ole being average tactician is a great man picker, so from that perspective he can put a team together which can win it for him and he will not do many mistakes in the market. Who should be given credit for that?
 
UNITED ACADEMY said:
It's called well prepared!! We were preparing this since June and know what we needed to do to prepare this. When transfer is being well prepared, it looked straight forward. When transfer is not well prepared, it becomes complicated.

Cavani's wages is still the same as what he earnt in PSG, he didn't lower his wages.
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He lowered the wage demands he was asking other clubs. No one said he lowered his wages.

And yes another word for something that isn’t complicated is, maybe you can help me out here, ‘straightforward’.
 
macheda14 said:
He lowered the wage demands he was asking other clubs. No one said he lowered his wages.

And yes another word for something that isn’t complicated is, maybe you can help me out here, ‘straightforward’.
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And how do you know he lowered the wage demands he was asking other clubs?

No such a thing called a transfer that involves between two clubs are straightforward. You need to convince the player with the project first, meet the agent's demand, meet the player's demand, meet the club's demand, and at the same time make sure all of these suit to the club's condition. This is far complex than just being straightforward, the player is not a free agent!!
 
Batman and Robin. I wonder if every summer is going to be like this from now on. It’s not hard. Just don’t blow all your money on trash, injury prone players and mercenaries who have us way down their list of priorities. A Small bit of due diligence (before you agree to hand over that kind of cash and be stuck with someone for years) most likely goes a long way…
 
First time in ages we look like a proper football club in a transfer window. Now sell Pogba and buy a quality DM/CM please.
 
Ali Dia said:
Batman and Robin. I wonder if every summer is going to be like this from now on. It’s not hard. Just don’t blow all your money on trash, injury prone players and mercenaries who have us way down their list of priorities. A Small bit of due diligence (before you agree to hand over that kind of cash and be stuck with someone for years) most likely goes a long way…
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All down to having someone connected to football making these decisions and leading the process, I'm sure.

Ed was great for the commercial/business side but quite out of his depth when dealing with players and clubs.
 
Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
All down to having someone connected to football making these decisions and leading the process, I'm sure.

Ed was great for the commercial/business side but quite out of his depth when dealing with players and clubs.
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And totally giving the managers the keys to the recruitment until the end of Jose. I think all of our signings under Ole have been good solid people who love the game and want to improve with us
 
Adnan said:
It could be a step forward too, if we sell Pogba and sign say, Tchouameni and Caqueret.
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I really like tchouameni. I think he’d be perfect for our holding midfield position. Good in the tackle and great distribution. I’d rate our chance of singing him at 0% though.

caquaret I’ve only heard of via FM.
 
Red Company said:
Honestly I’d continue with both. Henderson does seem to give unreliable vibes on certain occasions but any young keeper does. He just needs some time to settle in and having two and not one good CB in front him will help.

I think they both help keep each other on their toes and even if Henderson may get a bit frustrated over playing time, so be it. If he wants to be the #1 at a club like ours over others than he needs to handle the pressure and be patient. By the time he’s more mature in a year or twos time, DDG will be leaving or have left by then and the throne will be his for the taking.
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Gk must have clear head and play without pressure. In this situation both know thst one mistake means bench. Even Henderson spoke about it few weeks ago.

We must choose one. Imo, DDG who is level above Henderson.
 
MUFC OK said:
I really like tchouameni. I think he’d be perfect for our holding midfield position. Good in the tackle and great distribution. I’d rate our chance of singing him at 0% though.

caquaret I’ve only heard of via FM.
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Caqueret seems to be going under the radar slightly and looks to have the right attributes for what we need IMO.

Tchouameni and one of Camavinga/Caqueret would be superb additions if Pogba leaves IMO.
 
Strelok said:
Could you tell me why please?
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Losing Pogbas quality in the middle would be a huge blow. We looked very easy to defend against with just Bruno in the middle for a period last season. I don’t see a midfielder available that can fill that void.

A holding mid is needed but if that’s at the expense of pogba we would still be short of a midfield signing imo.
 
Matt Judge is the 'head of football negotiations' which has been well documented since March this year. The only difference is that he's now answering to John Murtough.
 
MUFC OK said:
Losing Pogbas quality in the middle would be a huge blow. We looked very easy to defend against with just Bruno in the middle for a period last season. I don’t see a midfielder available that can fill that void.

A holding mid is needed but if that’s at the expense of pogba we would still be short of a midfield signing imo.
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That's been debated to death here mate. We signed Sancho, he and Bruno is quite enough I think. Now we should look to upgrade our McFred.

Anyway, we should not turn this thread into another Pogba one I think, there are already plenty out there.
 
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