Excluding Fred who hasn't had enough time and dalot who is too inexperienced, none of those players is going to transform in half a season.
Manchester United ready to back José Mourinho with £100m-plus in January
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Really hope that when the next manager comes in (preferably after a proper Director of Football) that they do back him fully. I hope that mistakes are learnt from. Jose should have been backed fully or sacked in the summer.
Wouldn't surprise me, but hopefully, the mistakes over the last few years actually make them realise.
Personally, I would rather José be backed in January, given a new contract and backed in the Summer again. I just think it is so clear that the board, at least in the Summer, thought best to not invest heavily in a man they expected to be gone in a year. They underestimated Chelsea, Spurs, and Arsenal, thinking that our comfortable second place last year meant we could just coast it to top four this season without little investment and the next guy can take us on from there. When really, the best thing to do would have been give the manager everything he wanted and actually try to win the title back from City. Regardless of how good everyone thinks they are, and how good they are in reality, no team has defended the title since 08/09 which has to count for something? It's incredibly hard to do. So, with the right investment, we'd have had a chance. As it stands, we have none.
I'll stand by my statements for now. If José has a poor November, eg. failure to beat Bournemouth, along with losses to Juventus, Man City would put massive pressure on him with victories over Palace and Young Boys being requirements for him to have a chance.
If the board spend big money in January it's such a reactive approach and I expect it to just backfire.
If only Jose was a fan of spending in January...
We were all ecstatic with almost all of Mourinho's signings. They were great players to get. Pogba, Matic, Mkhitaryan, Lukaku, Sanchez--go back to the day before we signed them and we would all have voted yes. Bailly started out great, too. The rest are too early to make any kind of judgment. You can look at them now and see that something isn't working, but this is the case for practically every player in the squad. There's clearly something very wrong at the club, and has been for years, which affects the whole team. Something's making them all crap. You can't conclude from this that they were all bad signings. Most of them have shown in the past that they can offer precisely what we need, but when they arrive here, they get hit by whatever malady is hindering the entire team. Calling them bad signings is like hiring a guy and then calling him yet another an ineffective employee when he gets sick from the asbestos in the office, like all your other employees have. Fix the fecking asbestos.
That's just the thing though, they JUST gave him a new contract, before supposedly deciding he wasn't the man to take us forward. His contract was due to expire next summer... something doesn't add up in all the stories. That contract decision was one of the very few things we actually know, but it seems to contradict a narrative, so it's dismissed, and black is openly discussed as obviously white.
my suspicion is that the board extended his contract cos they liked the money from our return to CL and felt we could be the new arsenal, (finishing top 4 regularly with minimal squad investments,) allowing glazers to siphon money from the club.
unfortunately, mourinho has title ambitions, which require investment levels that likely leaves the club in the red. That rude awakening likely came with Mourinho's summer transfer requests.
Need to buy Sancho for 100M now. Quote me in 2028.
I have a 100% success rate predicting controversial transfers/prospects like Sanchez, Sanches, Dembele being overpriced and Mbappe being the next goat after watching him for 5 games 2016.
I have a 100% success rate predicting controversial transfers/prospects like Sanchez, Sanches, Dembele being overpriced and Mbappe being the next goat after watching him for 5 games 2016.
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Yeah minimal squad investments, club that spent either 2nd or 3rd most money in last 4-5 years and the club that spends 2nd highest on wages is thinking of making top 4 on minimal investments.
Kind of a weird time to put out this story. Honestly, better off not even reading any of that. Still not even convinced the manager has proper backing that would benefit the club and the team as a whole. So yeah, when we sign guys, then I'll sit up in my chair and believe we're signing people.
Given the needs of the team if it wants to compete for titles, what was invested in the summer was minimal.
The only way you deem it adequate is if you believe there is a manager that would win the PL with our current squad
More like back him with huge money for 2 years and then not back him as much in season 3.
These Mourinho arguments are getting tiresome
We have 24 players registered, ignoring players like Rashford. We can't sign more players unless we offload few.
Also why is wages ignored. We pay 2nd most in football, that's not ambition to finish top 4 with minimal investment.
Those are less relevant to assembling a title contending squad. Firstly, you can buy players for whatever price tag suits you and pay them extremely high wages, but that does not equate to the players having the needed quality if you have not spent your money wisely. Also my point was to the lack of investment last summer, while prior investment simply got us CL football
If you want to compete, you look at the gap between you and the champions and/or other close competitors i.e. Citeh, Chelsea, and Liverpool in PL, and Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, and Juve in CL. Taking a look at those teams, the current united squad is a level or two below them and required adding players of higher quality and experience than Fred and Dalot to take us to the top level.
If buying players for whatever price doesn't equate to players having needed quality, then why are we talking about even more players. Still we would have had same argument, that signed players are of not needed quality because Jose can't get best out of them. We have signed the players Jose wanted for 2 years and still we are so far from competing, so why do you think adding few more Jose players will change any of that?
These are all Jose signed players, we would have added few more ageing players who would have been hard to get rid of. I'm glad we didn't sign few more 29-30 year old players.
Also you have ignored the squad size. We have completed the slots, even for new manager unless we offload, we can't sign new players. This has nothing to do with "sell to buy" policy. We have registered 24 players something that is ignored everytime.
Also forgetting all the arguments, how is spending 2nd/3rd most on transfer fee and spending 2nd most in wages equate to lacking ambition and settling for top 4. FFS we have spent money, so how can we be new Arsenal.
Whether players are of required quality or whether they are West Brom level is different discussion, how can anyone say club is trying with minimal spend is beyond me.
No thanks, we already have enough of those....
Sits back with popcorn and waits for response
Selling Center backs before we brought new ones always made sense to me in the summer. However I didn’t take into consideration the squad is also at full capacity. So thanks for that.
Sits back with popcorn and waits for response
Selling Center backs before we brought new ones always made sense to me in the summer. However I didn’t take into consideration the squad is also at full capacity. So thanks for that.
Response is obvious. We should have offloaded players no matter what the price was. We are not selling club.
True until we sell them for peanuts and Ed gets taunted for us being mugged off again. It’s always been hard trying to sell our players for good money; even more so when they are being sold more than likely because they have underperformed then add to that they are on more wages than the team trying to buy them.
True - I keep thinking about this too. I think it’s probably a combination of things going on. I guess we will never fully know. But as professionals, they should really get their s*** together or shipped out. The lazy excuse is that it’s all to do with Mou, whether it was him buying these players in the first place or he is not coaching or ...... Not saying he is not part of it but there are other factors involved for sure. We are such a massive club and weight of responsibility can be overwhelming at times.
The current United squad is not a level below the likes of Chelsea or Liverpool. Reading this tedious shite is simply tedious. The deflation of the existing playing squad in support of a cooked manager has been persistent since Ferguson retired even in spite of the the ever-improving and ever-expensive squad of players we’ve been building.
The mods on this forum should make this my tagline given how often I say it: Liverpool are practically top of the table with Gini Wijnaldum and James Milner in central midfield. Their right back is younger than Dalot. Joe Gómez was about as unproven as Axel Tuanzebe prior to last season and Andy Robertson was a £7 million punt from Hull City. Their manager has made it work due to his methods.
More quality players will take us to the “top level”? Keep banging that head, lad. It won’t break the wall.
Not sure what narrative you mean but giving him a new contract was an obviously stupid decision. He wasn't doing anything special, we wouldn't have really risked much by waiting until the end of the season to assess.
Spot on.
Exactly this. They still have the likes of Moreno, Lallana and Lovren in the squad. Jordan Henderson is their fecking captain. This idea that they are individually a level above us is laughable at best and certainly not the reason why they look likely to finish above us for the second time in three years under Mourinho.
Seconded.
Alderweireld is old? That's news to me. How about Maguire?
Spunking 70m on Alderweireld when we could've waited and bringing him in this Jan for a third that amount is financially irresponsible. No one accused City of lacking ambition when they did the same with Sanchez, even when he ended up with us.
Maguire isn't good enough. We've already have 2 mediocre England international CB (for one reason or another) in our team, no need for a 3rd. You can certainly question if Woodward or whoever behind that refusal is qualified to make that decision, but those same people presumably overruled Mourinho on swapping Martial for Willian, so there's that.
Thank you.
Well, he is human, so if hatred is directed towards him, it will have some effect.
He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar enterprise, I'd expect him to have a thicker skin and follow his intuitions to the end without being swayed by headlines.
Well that's a different matter though, how much financial sense it makes. I'm only talking about age here being a big factor. 29 is not old at all for a CB. Maguire was really good in the WC. I don't see why they wouldn't have wanted him at the time.
Keep preaching bro
As usual. Spot on.
This is why I think that Mourinho needs to be able to give his players some more time to adapt. We always say that about managers, "give him time". We also owe it to the players, because many of them are dependant on confidence these days. In any job, working with a fear that you will make errors never motivates.
He needs to give them a run, he made the choice of signing them. He's tried out Matic and Lukaku, that didn't work.
The big money was spent when we dropped out of top 4.
When LVG got us top 4, the following Summer, we didn't spend much.
When Jose got us a solid 2nd place, well within top 4, we didn't spend much.
It was pretty clear that the board pulled the plug on funding a league title. Once Jose submitted his transfers necessary to do this, the cost was so large, it made no financial sense.
From a business perspective it doesn't make any sense to win the league, given the cost involved and the extra income generated is minimal. Basically, it's a loss maker.
Regarding salaries - our negotiations team is terrible at negotiating salaries with agents. They want to offer a cheaper deal, but they are so bad at doing their job that the agent of the player always wins.
Still not convinced about the "saving money" theme? Try this:
Some of our players, including Martial, DDG and (just recently) Shaw had allowed their contracts to run down (Arsenal did something very similar).
Fans are asking: why have we (and Arsenal) allowed this to happen? it makes no sense.
Answer: From a business angle, it makes complete sense.
Let's say you have player X. A top player. Currently being paid by MUFC £100k. His contract runs out in 24 months.
Scenario1: we offer him a contract now, for £150k. He signs. For the next 2 years we pay him 104 x £150k = £15600000 = £15.6M
Scenario2: we offer him a contract in 12 months, for £150k. He signs. For the next 2 years we pay him (52 x £100k) + (52 x £150k) = £13000000 = £13M
Notice that Scenario2 (running contracts down to the last year) saves roughly £2.6M. Now, let's say that we do this for 10 players on big wages. We'd save roughly £26M!
Get my drift?
You will also notice that I mentioned Arsenal. I did this because Arsenal always went for 4th place, while spending the least amount of money. This makes great business sense and we are following AFC's business principles.
In summary, aiming for 4th place, while spending as little as possible on transfers will yield the highest return on investment.
Renewing contracts, towards the end of the current contract saves even more money.
If we drop out of top 4, to get back into the top 4, big money on transfers should be spent.
If we are safely in the top 4, to remain in the top, low money on transfers should be spent.
If we do spend big on a player, he should be young (have a good resale value) and be highly marketable (allowing the MUFC brand to be followed/sold to potential sponsors in that player's country).
The entire model is based on money making.
Spend 100 million on new players in January they struggle to settle in and can't find form and then everyone gives out that there a flop, just like the Sanchez deal. Don't be giving that man another 100 million to spend on shite. Save the money for new manager when he comes in.
Shh...that argument doesn't work at cafe. Try more of like our players are shit and we need serious investment in every part of the squad. That will work here.
That would make sense if Klopp himself didn't feel he had to spend an absolute fortune within the last 10 months to match City.
And Jose has spent what over the past 2 years, peanuts?
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