Missing out on / ignoring Mane and Kante was a big mistake

Hisha

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transfer window. Signing both of them plus an experienced CB would have made us a real strong team. But i think the club wanted to sell some players before making additional signings other than the 4 primary targets but were unsuccessful on that. The fact that Kante waited till the last weeks to accept the Chelsea offer made me believe that we were in touch with him. I think Jose was really interested in him, but had to sell someone from our already packed midfield to sign him.

Imagine our team with the addition of an experienced CB, Kante-Pogba mid and Mane on the wing...
 
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Hindsight is 20/20. Mkhitaryan had a far better season than Mane and Pogba > Kante.
 
Yeah we might've been 5th instead of 6th, with now the most stacked squad in the league. Still vastly underachieving.
 
If we'd signed Kante and Mane, and not, say, Pogba and Mkhi, there would've been a thread called "Missing out on/ignoring Pogba and Mkhitaryan was obviously the biggest mistake etc." here.

That said I wanted us to sign Mane.
 
We've signed quite a few players close to or above their level before they got here. It wasn't a sure thing. Almost every one of them has regressed.

But I do think 90m on 3 or 4 players instead of Pogba could have put us in a much stronger position.
 
I'm more upset we missed out on Firminho by actively pursuing Depay
 
Hindsight is always great. There was talk that Jose phoned Kante if he wanted a move but the player had already agreed a move to Chelsea or something like that. There wasn't much fuss about that on here i seem to recall. Pogba was the one the whole caf devoted on
 
Borden said:
If we'd signed Kante and Mane, and not, say, Pogba and Mkhi, there would've been a thread called "Missing out on/ignoring Pogba and Mkhitaryan was obviously the biggest mistake etc." here.

That said I wanted us to sign Mane.
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I wanted Kante, but not at the expense of Pogba. I wanted them both..
 
Mkhi is new to the league (whisper the names Evra and Vidic and their first 6 months) and struggled with an injury till late - he'll come good and is better than Mane.

And you can't seriously compare Kante to Pogba because they play slightly different positions within central mid, plus Pogba is a better player by far. If your argument had been get Kante + Pogba you might have gotten a different response.
 
We need an rvn said:
Mkhi is new to the league (whisper the names Evra and Vidic and their first 6 months) and struggled with an injury till late - he'll come good and is better than Mane.

And you can't seriously compare Kante to Pogba because they play slightly different positions within central mid, plus Pogba is a better player by far. If your argument had been get Kante + Pogba you might have gotten a different response.
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He may never have Kante's impact.
 
We need an rvn said:
Mkhi is new to the league (whisper the names Evra and Vidic and their first 6 months) and struggled with an injury till late - he'll come good and is better than Mane.

And you can't seriously compare Kante to Pogba because they play slightly different positions within central mid, plus Pogba is a better player by far. If your argument had been get Kante + Pogba you might have gotten a different response.
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Kante + Pogba, yes that what i meant. I forgot to mention that..
 
It is not Pogba + Mkhi instead of Mane and Kante. We would still need another midfielder and winger anyway. Just need to ship out the deadwood first
 
VorZakone said:
Hindsight is 20/20. Mkhitaryan had a far better season than Mane and Pogba > Kante.
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Exactly. Ask anyone in the world and they would of said Mkhitaryan if given the choice out of him and Mane. Hell, Liverpool fans even would of.

I still think we should of gone in for Kante aswell as Pogba.
 
I don't really think Mane is a big miss, I think Rashford and Martial have much more potential but he would have been an improvement on Lingard and Depay. Kante is a miss but I wouldn't have sacrificed Pogba to get him, we already have players like Carrick and Schneiderlin who already do Kante's job, albeit the latter is not as good.
 
Hisha said:
transfer window. Signing both of them plus an experienced CB would have made us a real strong team. But i think the club wanted to sell some players before making additional signings other than the 4 primary targets but were unsuccessful on that. The fact that Kante waited till the last weeks to accept the Chelsea offer made me believe that we were in touch with him. I think Jose was really interested in him, but had to sell someone from our already packed midfield to sign him.

Imagine our team with the addition of an experienced CB, Kante-Pogba mid and Mane on the wing...
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Kante said himself (theres a quote from earlier) that he spoke to Mourinho in the summer but he was always set on going to Chelsea
 
JoaquinJoaquin said:
Exactly. Ask anyone in the world and they would of said Mkhitaryan if given the choice out of him and Mane. Hell, Liverpool fans even would of.

I still think we should of gone in for Kante aswell as Pogba.
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we did, he chose Chelsea

"It was amazing to have Mourinho call me, even though I'd been warned before how he would appeal to me," Kante said.

"I listened to his arguments about why I should move to United.

"But at that time I was hesitant between staying at Leicester or leaving for Chelsea.

"My discussions with them were already well underway. But when I spoke, I had a good feeling with Conte."
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We need a player like the Dortmund version of Gundogan a lot more than someone like Kante.

As for Mané, we signed Mkhitaryan for that position. We're just not playing him.
 
gza the genius said:
There was talk we tried for Kante but he wanted Chelsea. I think most people were happy with our choice of going for Mykhi at the time as well.
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Not me, i wanted us to sign one experienced CB for what ever price. I was not at all confident with Smalling, Rojo and Blind at CB and we didn't know much about Bailly at that time. At that time, many on here was against signing an additional CB. And i was not sure about Mikhi either. Plus i wanted us to sign both Kante and Pogba.
 
Mkhitaryan can be better than Mané IMO. We just need to sign him.

Pogba is better than Kante, if we want a ball winner in midfield we've Herrera and TFM.

Signing all of them would have been great and improbable.
 
When will people here realise that our problems are far bigger than just missing out on good players?

Literally the same scenario could have happened if we signed Mane and Liverpool signed Mikhi, it's easily possible that if we signed Mane that Mourinho would decide that he actually doesn't like what he sees from Mane on training while Liverpool signs Mkhi and he has an excellent start there.
 
ravi2 said:
If Firminho was here he would look as shit as Depay does imo.
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Under LVG I'd agree, but I think Firminho would be fine under Mourinho. Our attack is given a lot of freedom now and we interlink pretty well. Its just a shame we are forcing strikers to utilise the wide positions because of the lack of quality we have on the flanks..
 
Id agree with Kante, i really dont understand how we missed out on him. I thought Jose would have wrapped that up as he's his type of player.

Still you cant sign everyone in one window and Jose did need this season to evaluate.
 
Hisha said:
Not me, i wanted us to sign one experienced CB for what ever price. I was not at all confident with Smalling, Rojo and Blind at CB and we didn't know much about Bailly at that time. At that time, many on here was against signing an additional CB. And i was not sure about Mikhi either. Plus i wanted us to sign both Kante and Pogba.
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I thought we needed an experienced CB too, that doesn't take away that most were happy for us to pursue Mykhitarian over Mane.

I still think we're a Carrick replacement, a cb, and a winger away from where we need to be but we were never going to bring in 7 new first teamers in one summer.
 
I think people should accept that we can't buy everyone and that we will end up missing a good number of players who will look exactly what we need
 
Dont see how we missed out on Mane when Mkhitaryan was signed..

We should have signed Kante regardless of Pogba.
 
rocks13 said:
Plenty seem to have decided Bailly world class on what he's done so far so I don't see why not.
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Because he came off of a great season in Spain and hit the ground running over here. Basically nobody watched him play before and his performances matched the reports from Spain.
Mane was dropped from the Southampton side for a while, only scoring a handful of goals.
Mane could turn out to be a fantastic signing but could also be going through a run of form before a drop off that has happened time and time again over the last few seasons. Another example is Blind matched Baillys performances last season but he wasn't receiving the praise Bailly did.
Anyway part of Baillys appeal is he seems to be so good despite only playing 50 odd professional games.
It's more of a unique scenario with Bailly than Mane, it's a difficult comparison to make.
 
Hisha said:
Players always talk high of the club in which they just signed for. So, his words may not be 100% true..
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So we ignore the players own words where he says Mourinho called him and just run with the assumption we ignored him?
 
Why would you want Kante with Pogba? It flopped for France, why would it work for us?
 
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