Since you asked, I'm of the opinion:
-Cavani can certainly be trusted for another year, especially if we bring in another front 3 player and he doesn't have to start every match.
-We need to give Henderson a shot. De Gea isn't good enough, but replacing him isn't our most urgent need.
-We need a CB, DM, RW/CF.
We can use Pogba in a swap deal for any of those of 3. I don't think he needs direct replacing, he's barely played DM in our tough matches anyway. Call me naive, jury's still out on VDB for me.
That's 2 player left. Ideally we buy a world class DM and get a more experienced RW who's a bit cheaper and won't stand in the way of the excited young players we've got.
That leaves Cavani and Matic replacements and perhaps a GK for the year after. If we're lucky the academy will fill one of the vacancies.
I highly rate Shaw, Maguire, Bailly, AWB, Bruno, Rashford. Add in one of Fred/McTominay, one of Cavani/Greenwood plus the 3 signings I mentioned and that's a squad that can challenge for the title.
Clearly you don't rate half the players I mentioned, and that's probably the core of our disagreement.
With how shit LVG transfers were and how short-term thinking Mourinho was, why risk getting a new hot shot manager? Besides there's no one available. If there was one, it should've been Tuchel imo.
- Agree on Cavani, probably good enough for another year, but probably needs replacing after that.
- Agree on needing to give Henderson a shot, but Ole seems to be sticking with de Gea so it doesn't seem likely, which means that I think Henderson will get impatient and leave. Worst case scenario is we're stuck with de Gea and Henderson decides to leave and ends up being good enough all along, and we're stuck with having to replace de Gea anyway, but in three years' time with de Gea costing us along the way.
- Sure, we could use Pogba in a swap deal, but it seems like he'll be interested in Juve or Real, who are we interested in from those clubs? Last year of contract will mean that his transfer fee won't be big and replacing him (with Grealish for example) would be a bigger net cost for us, and I'd rather we go for a sure thing than risk another van de Beek situation where we get a cheaper player that the manager just doesn't find a way to use
- See above for VDB, I don't think Ole knows what to do with him, so that's £40m down the drain under Ole (minus what we could recoup for him).
Yeah, I agree that our disagreement is based on what we think of our players. I do think that we have a bunch of players who could be very good, and I've said as much previously. I think that Fred/McTominay/Greenwood/Rashford/Bruno/Martial/Cavani/Shaw/van de Beek/Bailly (but he's never fit...) could definitely be a big part of a title-winning team if performing to their potential in a well-working team, but the current management isn't making them look good enough.
It's either due to not being able to improve them individually or using them in a system that exposes their weaknesses. AWB for example has the tools to be a great defender, but nothing so far after almost two years at the club indicates that our coaching team has identified his weaknesses and attempted to correct them (defensive positioning, attacking movement, technical ability, awareness of his surroundings both in terms of attackers and his fellow defenders).
So what it boils down for me is that I don't think Ole can make our players perform to their potential, and thus we're going to see them becoming deadwood down the line that are going to need replacing with even more money (Martial, James, van de Beek for example), and I just don't trust Ole to sign the right players for the style of play he's trying to implement, given even more time and money.
Obviously, I don't want us to go for Big Sam or any manager that isn't called Solskjær. Whoever the new manager is would obviously need to have a track record of being able to implement a style of football compatible with what the board wants from the team going forward and ideally we'd have a DoF to oversee that, so we don't end up with another LvG to Mourinho to Ole transition. Ideally, we'd want someone who would be well placed to make the most of this squad's best players. That manager would have a clear philosophy and a team that reflects that philosophy, which is something I'm not seeing with Ole, with the de Gea/Maguire/AWB axis being the main example of that. I'm not so sure about Tuchel, but I like Nagelsmann and I'd love to see what he could do with a front four of Rashford-Bruno-Greenwood behind Martial or Cavani.
