We did. And honestly its not worth discussing the players that left in more length. But, if we do take a honest look at our squad, its pretty clear its not the superstar squad we have had in the past. Its pretty far from it.
DDG: 25 million£. Used to be the best keeper in world and has looked a shadow of himself for about 2-3 years now.
Maguire: 80 million£, expensive, maybe even overpriced, but that's what you got to pay for English internationals
Lindelof: 35 million£. Has looked decent from time to time, but overall has been poor imo in his time here. Dont think hes gonna be good enough as a first choice CB if we want big trophies
Rojo/Jones/Baily: 78 million£ combined. Problem with these guys is that they cant stay injury free for more than 2 months, and even when they are fit they are incredibly rash and tend to make massive blunders way to often for them to be trusted
Tuanzebe: 0 million£ Hopefully he can develop into a first team regular
Shaw: 37 million£: Hes decent but has the worst injury record i have seen. I dont see the point in having him at all since he never plays anyway
Young: 18 million£: Hes 34, bizzare that we still rely on him so much
AWB: 55 million£: Hes great. POTM in October and if he keeps on delivering hes guaranteed to be our POTY
Dalot: 18 million£: Maybe he can become good one day, but right now hes well below AWB
Matic: 45 million£: Had one good season before he lost his legs. 45 million is bloody expensive for one decent season
Pogba: 100 million£: Fecking expensive and our only superstar outfield player. Problem is that hes been injured almost the entire season so far
McTomminay: 0 million£. I like him a lot, but at 22 he really should not be a regular starter as a CM as most CM's dont develop the nous and tactical awareness to be top player until they are 25+
Fred: 50 million£: I dont hate the guy and we cant blame him for his price tag or the fact that we bought him, but he is truly Bebe-levels of bad and 50 million is just absurd
Mata: 44 million£: I think hes been a decent player for us, but its clear as day he no longer has the legs to play at this level.
Pereira: 0 million£: Has been here 4-5 years? Has never shown that hes anywhere near the required level
Lingaard: 0 million£: Zero goals and assists since last December says it all. Is stealing a living here
Martial: 60 million£: Everyone (including Ole) was hoping this was going to be his year. Hopefully it can, but his consistency has to improve drastically if hes ever going to become a top class CF
James: 15 million£: Take penalties out of the equation, and hes our most productive player this season. Time will tell, but if he keeps improving, 15 million is going to be an absolute steal
Rashford: 0 million£: Hes quite good at some things, but quite limited otherwise. Maybe he will become great one day, but right now hes little more than a promising academy player really
Greenwood: 0 million£: Way to early to tell. Maybe he will become a star one day
So lets sum this up. We have spent a combined total of 272 million£ on Rojo, Jones, Baily, Shaw, Fred, Young, Matic and Mata and that is not accounting for inflation in prices, had we bought them today, the sum would be at least twice that imo, but lets say 400 million£ to get a nice round number. These are "deadwood" for different reasons. Some are simply not good enough, some are always injured while some are just too old for this level
Then you have the "good" players DDG, Pogba and Martial bought before Oles time for 185 million£, but in Martials case, needs to show a lot more to justify that price tag really. And then you have the ones Ole bought: Maguire, AWB and James for a combined 150 million£. The rest of them are academy players.
So the situation is as follows. Before Ole got here, 272 million£ (much more if you adjust for inflation) had been pissed away on deadwood or players that should have been replaced a long time ago. The actual good players that were here accounted for around 185 million£, while Ole bought for 150 million£ himself, the rest are academy players and most of them dont look good enough. if we are being completely honest.
Those are damning numbers imo, almost half (even more if you account for inflation) of our budget has been spent on dross, meanwhile only about 335 million are have been spent an actual useful players.
This isnt about accepting mediocrity or saying that Ole has done wonderfully or anything. But rather accepting the fact that despite our big name our current squad has been mangled by years of bad transfers and is currently pretty fecking far from where it should be in terms of quality
The squad isn't great but at the same time it's not a 10th squad as I said previously. Shieffled United are ahead of us in the table with better stats and they just got promoted. No one asked us to challenge for the league or even finish top 4, but we should be ahead of Brighton, Palace, Bournemouth and a newly promoted team as Shieffled, or do these have better squads and better footballing structure than us?
Go on then, keep being proud of almost being on par with Sheffield United.