The fact ETH didn't want Ugarte and would rather have kept McT surely tells enough about his ability to identify talent and fill gaps in the squad. I'm sure given the choice he'd have replaced Casemiro with Ugarte but this idea that it takes months to build fitness is rubbish.
Manuel Ugarte | Signs for United
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It does when you're asked to cover 15k a game due to the daft football we play
Highly doubt he doesn’t want him. Athletic aren’t some bastion of truth, after their sale they’ve pumped out just as much clickbait as the rest. ETH spoke directly on Ugarte and was full of praise for him, so I don’t see how you would just assume otherwise. Also the quote in the Pilib tweet is about his fitness not ability…
Yeah Ugarte won't solve the issue, will only create another scapegoat.
Agreed. I said it in the game thread. The individual mistakes come because of structural issues. Casemiro is isolated and doesn’t have many easy, short passes to pick from. So he has to play those longer passes which get intercepted. Ugarte won’t solve this problem. We need to give our 6 more passing options in midfield. And we need to reduce the distance between the lines. I feel like we’re far too stretched.
Playing the 3-1-6 is not the problem, the problem is using Casemiro/Ugarte as the 1 in the middle. Casemiro neither has the legs to cover the gaps, nor is he press resistant enough. Ugarte, idk if he will play that role well either, its not his game.
That's why Ten Hag put Mainoo in that role for the second half, pushing Collyer further up. If we are to make anything of it, Collyer/Ugarte need to push higher up, with Mainoo being the link player, the connector. It was also encouraging to see Dalot/Maz inverting to help Mainoo to make it a 3-2 instead of a 3-1.
I agree our young forwards need to step up their game, I think we added some physicality to our squad this summer, but I also think we need another ball player in midfield. Mainoo is our only one who can play that role, and we need someone with a more expansive range of passing.
Like you said, our long balls were not working yesterday, due to a combination of bad passing and losing the physical battle. I'm not sure if that's a personnel issue, or a coaching one.
Casimero had plenty of passing options on the first goal and was not isolated. He was just rubbish
The goal where this showed was the Mainoo goal
We also have not played a 3 1 build up most if this season
I just read ETH’s comments. He really said it will take weeks, maybe MONTHS, for Ugarte to build up his fitness 
Ugarte isn't going to play through balls or passes between the lines, no but he can effectively play balls into the channel
He just doesn't help himself when he talks, and thats been an issue throughout his time here. It's so sad having a manager who you simply don't want to listen to. Wonder if the players feel similar.
I think Casemiro can too, but when you are pressed by 2-3 of physical midfielders, it becomes much harder, you have to be elite at beating the press.
That's why I think Ten Hag switched to Mainoo for that role in the 2nd half.
I dont think the players have turned on Ten Hag yet, when our players do(happaned many times in the past), it was plain to see. They simply stop running.
Yes I don't think the players have been unprofessional yet. Apart from the obvious.
Casemiro is a bit of a 'Rice' conundrum for us. He's better as a defensive player, but also not the best at receiving the ball out of the back. The problem is that he doesn't have the mobility to do the other midfield role effectively so Arsenal's solution of pushing him forward and having another midfielder do that task isn't ideal for us either.
ETH is just showing resistance to the management. Would have been different story if he is from Ajax. The fraud.
Have you thought about how the players he worked with previously have already received his instructions and are familiar with his tactics, so it's a shortcut to bedding in?
I think it's obvious they put up with him because they're scared of fan reaction when the stories come out that they're not playing for him or think he's a dick. You look at the regression from almost all our players who have been good under previous managers or elsewhere and you have to ask what's going on. There were many occasions against Liverpool where confidence just looked shot.
We talking about ETH? What tactics?
The Athletic state that Ten Hag wasn't keen originally as it meant losing McTominay, but came around pretty quickly after being shown what he'll bring to the team.
That's a long way from him still not wanting him.
Funny joke
The narrative around this is all wrong.
Obviously the conversation has veered towards “ten Hag gets player he doesn’t want” when really the narrative should be around a negative impact of PSR. Here we have an academy player that has been at the club for 20 odd years and been a great servant, the manager likes him, his wages were reasonable; the squad likes him and as a squad player he has had a good impact. Yet PSR rules determine that as an academy player his sale benefit is greater than a signed player with book value.
Now this is Manchester United, one of the richest clubs in the world, albeit run badly, but PSR shouldn’t be forcing any clubs to sell academy players against the managers wishes in order to balance the books. It’s contradictory to the entire purpose PSR was brought in.
The PSR rules don't force anything other than making clubs run sustainably rather than making huge losses.
Sale of an academy player providing a higher profit isn't a new thing because of PSR, it's the same accounting treatment it has always been.
It’s not the “same as it’s always been” at all unless you are referring to FFP which is relatively new.
United could choose to make an accounting loss before in order to keep McTominay and sign Ugarte. Or they could choose to mitigate it by offloading someone like Eriksen from the squad instead.
PSR rules meant that United had no other feasible way of signing Ugarte than selling McTominay because that’s the only way we could comply with PSR rules and not be heavily fined or docked points.
The point I’m making is that a side effect of PSR is that you’re going to see more and more academy players sold by clubs for financial reasons rather than footballing reasons. Players the club would otherwise have kept and invested in will become high value tokens to balance the books for PSR.
But they always were 'high value tokens to balance the books'. The 'books' are the same PSR or not.
The difference is we can't choose to run at a higher loss than the PSR threshold without getting punished. Which stops clubs like City and Newcastle going out and spending crazy amounts and always running at a huge loss.
This got me really riled up too. A week or two is fine but months?!!I just read ETH’s comments. He really said it will take weeks, maybe MONTHS, for Ugarte to build up his fitness
Mainoo and Ugarte. Two pieces of our three piece puzzle. Just need to find that last one. Oh and a few rotational pieces. Hmm, this metaphor doesn't really work.
Only it doesn’t stop them because they have a network of feeder clubs they can move players around.
You’re completely ignoring the point I’m making. PSR was set up to ensure that clubs do not take the piss and just buy titles.
A club using their academy effectively by having those academy players go on to become important squad members has always been commended and encouraged. PSR is having a negative effect on that because it means selling academy players is often the only feasible way to navigate the PSR rules.
You’re also wrong about it being an age old issue and not one introduced by PSR.
Internally, PSR/FFP excluded, accountants don’t really care if a player being sold was academy or signing. £25m in is £25m in. The concept of amortisation is only really relevant in terms of creative accounting to satisfy financial regulations.
In terms of day to day accounting of ensuring incomings cover outgoings, the people who own our debt couldn’t give two figs whether we raised those funds through the sale of an academy player or the sale of a signed player.
I agree with that no doubt, McTominay should have been a United lifer as a squad member, and it's a shame we had to force him out to buy a player we could afford without issue.
There's also another narrative that's getting lost, which is a really important positive one - Ten Hag not being forced to come up with transfer targets all by himself, now we have footballing management that understand the type of football we're trying to play and can identify targets that will fit that approach and improve us. That's going to be hugely important going forward, no matter what managers come and go.
Ugarte has a better pass completion than Casemiro, to say there will be no improvement is silly.
If Casemiro hadn't lost the ball in those situations and actually made a pass, we would have outnumbered them in our attacking move.
If Ugarte can make those passes or not fall over like an old man when pressed, we will do better.
Ten Hags plan and setup is an attacking one and he also needs the players to pull it off the same way Pep or Arteta do.
Ugarte is a key signing so let's see how we do when he's involved. Modern football is a game of risk and reward, it's fine margins when looking at creating or being subject to overloads. You cannot lose the ball how Casemiro or Mainoo did ultimately yesterday.
Im eager to see how we do with Ugarte in there instead. Then you can start properly criticising Ten Hag if it isn't working.
To complete the whole squad, we need a LB/LCB, CM to rotate with Mainoo and a right winger to replace Sancho and Greenwood.
We also will need to replace decent players with better ones next summer. Such as Shaw, Rashford, Maguire, Casemiro, Eriksen, Antony.
We're still a work in progress overall, with Ugarte back we will have a good starting 11. And when players like Casemiro, Maguire, Zirkzee and Rashford are pushed to the bench we might do better.
Onana
Mazraoui De Ligt Martinez Dalot/Shaw
Mainoo Ugarte
Amad Fernandes Garnacho
Hojlund
Subs
Altay
Dalot/Shaw
Yoro
Maguire
Evans
Casemiro
Eriksen
Mount
Rashford
Zirkzee
After the international break we should have Hojlund, Shaw and Ugarte pushing for a starting place. I'll reserve my judgement until then. Our squad depth or integration of new players isn't there yet to guarantee a result vs Liverpool.
Yeah I made the second point to another poster who was complaining about the manager getting a signing he didn’t want. That’s obviously bollocks, as I said to them, it’s how a footballing structure is supposed to work. Managers shouldn’t be expected to know every player in world football, we have scouts, DOF and head of recruitment who need to do their work to identify players and then sell those players to the manager. That happened here and it’s a good thing.
Ten Hag refuses to change his system though no matter how often it gets taken apart by opposition coaches. It's why he has to go.
Football is a simple game and I don't know why he is trying to overcomplicate it with this weird system that exposes our midfield every game.
Yea, agree with this. But this is how narratives get framed.
It's fully understandable why a manager wouldn't want to lose a McTominay - a player and person you only ever hear good reports on from those who have worked with him. Not only would the manager not want to lose that influence, but in a team where the attack is so limited he is losing an option that he could put on in games to try and disrupt in the box to get goals. This squad already lacked goals and we have sold one of our players who can chip in. In an ideal world Casemiro would have been flogged to get Ugarte in, but the club had to make a decision due to the PSR parameters. Remains to be seen if that was the right decision.
The "albeit run badly" is doing insanely heavy lifting here. United had insane losses in the last 3 years.
An academy player was 100% profit before PSR and amortisation of purchased players worked in exactly the same way pre PSR.
If PSR didn't exist but the Glazers had said "we must not make a loss" in the last 3 years then we'd have had to sell (or not buy) to make that happen. PSR has just enforced the same thing.
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To be clear, if a club has made lots of expensive, poor purchases that need to be replaced, there absolutely should be consequences for that. It should not be easy or painless to dig yourself out of that hole. If the cost of doing that is selling academy players then so be it. There’s too much hoarding of players at the top clubs anyway.
If you want to avoid situations like this then do better with your signings and other sales.
Yep. But I'd rather have Kobbie deeper and Casemiro/Ugarte/Collyer pushing up, rather than Casemiro being the first receiver, and Mainoo higher up.
Neither are ideal. We need to sign a ball playing 6 and bomb Bruno out.
Why is he coming out saying things like it may take months for Ugarte to get up to fitness? feck me he’s been starting Casemiro since the first game, and he’s nowhere near the fitness level he should be. Yet again it’s just another example of Ten Hag’s complete lack of awareness about the underswell of feeling amongst us fans. All of us, mainly, were hopeful following an excellent transfer window and yet he serves up dross from the first game and it’s steadily getting worse. We want hope and statements saying that Ugarte could take months are not what we want to hear, coupled with the fact that that statement is absolute bullshit. He’s so lacking in any awareness that it’s quite staggering and most fans now are just utterly tired of his excuses.
It's not even true that the manager got a player he didn't want - the reporting is very clear that he came around after being shown what Ugarte could do for us. The important thing is that we aren't relying on the manager to do the job of an entire scouting network anymore, which is quite frankly magical given how that's been one of our biggest issues for the past decade.
Managing expectations.
In reality he was described by his former coach as having 7 lungs so it may not take too long.
Not sure if he has any International matches coming up but if not, the staff can coach him what his role will be.
In the Ugarte thread that was closed an important discussion had emerged but was cut short. We could have and should have brought in Ugarte earlier in the summer so that we would have been ready for the new season. Even if it Brant selling McTominay for 5m less and paying 10m more for Ugarte.
The hole at CDM is catastrophic. Of course it’s still early in the new season but we’re facing the prospect of the manager being sacked and another season lost as we scramble to climb back into the top 6. We should have been competing for the top 4, if not perhaps taking a sniff at second or third.
The hole at CDM is catastrophic. Of course it’s still early in the new season but we’re facing the prospect of the manager being sacked and another season lost as we scramble to climb back into the top 6. We should have been competing for the top 4, if not perhaps taking a sniff at second or third.
At least there's still Ugarte and Yoro coming in soon.
And there's De Ligt now together with Mazraoui and Zirkzee. And when you look at rising stars like Mainoo, Garnacho, Amad and Hojlund, things are look bright again.
And there's De Ligt now together with Mazraoui and Zirkzee. And when you look at rising stars like Mainoo, Garnacho, Amad and Hojlund, things are look bright again.
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