'Premiership Proven'

Rozay

Master of Hindsight
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This criteria appears to have become increasingly important in our recruitment policy in recent years, and I am not sure it has not come at a potential compromise in quality.

It appears that Moyes has a similar affinity, at least for the time being (he didn't do this at Everton), and it appears that United (De Gea aside) have favoured that any big money spent must be on a player who has PL experience. Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams (there are exceptions), I think we have perhaps limited our scope, and we could have done better on some of our recent signings if we looked abroad.
 
Also, just wanted to get an idea of how important others felt this was. I personally think it is overstated at times.
 
Completely agree. Outside of top 5-6 clubs (where we rarely sign players from them anyway) you'll hardly find players of United quality (Valencia has been the exception). Personally, I am glad when we sign young players with potential from English football but when we go for experienced mediocre players I am not so happy. Simply because for those money we can find better value if we try to do business outside of England.
 
I agree with you to an extent but it's not affected us that much. I mean we did get Premiership proven players like RVP, Rio, Rooney, Valencia etc and all have contributed to us greatly in their time. We also get our fair share of playesr from outside the EPL such as Nani, Anderson, DDG etc. There is a nice balance. Relying on expensive players from foreign leagues is risky, look at Veron, Crespo, Shevchenko etc so we don't plan our transfer policy around that. I don't think too much is wrong with our transfes.
 
fabregas is not from the EPL
fellaini is
thiago is not from the EPL
baines is
that's 2/4. i don't you think enough data/evidence to support this "It appears that Moyes has a similar affinity"
 
Young apart, I think we've done very well with who we signed from the PL.
 
ryan_forlan said:
fabregas is not from the EPL
fellaini is
thiago is not from the EPL
baines is
that's 2/4. i don't you think enough data/evidence to support this "It appears that Moyes has a similar affinity"
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Fabregas is as PL proven as it gets you (insert insult)

Also, by all accounts, Moyes 'did not fancy' Thiago.
 
Whats wrong with this? We play ~50 games in the country, so any player who is coming should be well versed with the conditions of the PL football.
 
In recent years, we've signed Vidic, Evra, Hernandez, Anderson, Nani, Buttner, Henriquez, Rafael and Fabio, DDG, Zaha and Kagawa. That's off the top of my head with 30 second's thought.

None of them had any Premiership experience.
 
100 said:
Young apart, I think we've done very well with who we signed from the PL.
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I think we could have done better than Valencia personally, especially just after Ronaldo left. We also signed Michael Owen that summer.

It isn't only who we have signed, it is who we haven't too. Players who have moved around Europe that we seem to be unsure of, and then go on to be brilliant. We had a long 'look' at Silva by all accounts, but did not make a move. The summer we signed Young, Mata moved to Chelsea.
 
Rozay said:
Also, just wanted to get an idea of how important others felt this was. I personally think it is overstated at times.
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I think you might be overstating the extent to which "Premiership Proven" is at the heart of our transfer policy. We recruit from a good mix of leauges and backgrounds. Yes you could argue RVP, Jones, Valencia etc were all premiership proven. But for every one of those I could list DeGea, Hernandez, Kagawa etc.
 
Rozay said:
This criteria appears to have become increasingly important in our recruitment policy in recent years, and I am not sure it has not come at a potential compromise in quality.

It appears that Moyes has a similar affinity, at least for the time being (he didn't do this at Everton), and it appears that United (De Gea aside) have favoured that any big money spent must be on a player who has PL experience. Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams (there are exceptions), I think we have perhaps limited our scope, and we could have done better on some of our recent signings if we looked abroad.
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I don't know how true this is at all, large parts of our squad aren't or weren't Premiership proven. We've brought a lot of young players in the last few years we prefer to invest in youth than make marquee signings, a good bulk of our squad shows that.
 
Revan said:
Completely agree. Outside of top 5-6 clubs (where we rarely sign players from them anyway) you'll hardly find players of United quality (Valencia has been the exception). Personally, I am glad when we sign young players with potential from English football but when we go for experienced mediocre players I am not so happy. Simply because for those money we can find better value if we try to do business outside of England.
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Is Valencia just an example here, or are you saying Valencia is the only exception?
 
OnlyTwoDaSilvas said:
Is Valencia just an example here, or are you saying Valencia is the only exception?
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One example. My point was that you can hardly find quality players (who are experienced) outside of top clubs in England. And to be fair Valencia wasn't the best example because he was still a young player.
 
We also waited for Berbatov to 'do it in England' before buying him for three times the price. We'll probably do the same with at least one of Spurs' summer signings in the next few years too.

Modric was very highly rated before he came to England, and we should have perhaps gotten him before he came to Spurs, as opposed to trying to get him 'from' Spurs.
 
Bill.s.preston said:
In recent years, we've signed Vidic, Evra, Hernandez, Anderson, Nani, Buttner, Henriquez, Rafael and Fabio, DDG, Zaha and Kagawa. That's off the top of my head with 30 second's thought.

None of them had any Premiership experience.
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You forgot BEBE!
 
Rozay said:
This criteria appears to have become increasingly important in our recruitment policy in recent years, and I am not sure it has not come at a potential compromise in quality.

It appears that Moyes has a similar affinity, at least for the time being (he didn't do this at Everton), and it appears that United (De Gea aside) have favoured that any big money spent must be on a player who has PL experience. Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams (there are exceptions), I think we have perhaps limited our scope, and we could have done better on some of our recent signings if we looked abroad.
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With Moyes, I'm pretty sure that the prem preference is short term only (possibly only this window). And Fergie did attempt to buy Hazard and Lucas for big amounts of money just last season.

Also you forgot Kagawa who didn't come cheap at all.

All in all, we might have a slight prem bias but that's IMO the most sensible way to go anyway.
 
I don't believe in the whole premiership proven thing, plenty of premiership proven players fail miserably after moving to other premiership clubs, it happens all the time, it means nothing as far as i'm concerned.

Premiership clubs don't share the same philosophy anymore, what works for stoke won't work for swansea, a manager should look at how the player fits his philosophy even if he has never played in the premier league.
 
Rozay said:
I think we could have done better than Valencia personally, especially just after Ronaldo left. We also signed Michael Owen that summer.

It isn't only who we have signed, it is who we haven't too. Players who have moved around Europe that we seem to be unsure of, and then go on to be brilliant. We had a long 'look' at Silva by all accounts, but did not make a move. The summer we signed Young, Mata moved to Chelsea.
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I'm not sure we could have, it felt like we were genuinely struggling financially in 2009 and 2010. You mention the domestic based players in Owen and Valencia but ignore that our foreign signings in that time were Obertan, Diouf, Bebe and Hernandez. They were punts bought in on the cheap in the hope that they might make it, Hernandez was an inspired find by our scouts and has been a fantastic signing but Diouf wasn't quite good enough, Obertan is poor and Bebe was just comically bad.

I agree about the Young signing being a weird one but we don't know if the club were after Mata and were possibly just gazumped. We wanted Hazard but he went to a smaller club with more money, Arsenal wanted Mata and the same thing happened. We'll continue to try and get good players from abroad (Kagawa and De Gea are 2 good examples in the last 2 years) but we also will continue to recognise that English football has a lot of very good players and that we are the most attractive club to players in England.
 
If the talent scouts and manager really demand "premiership proven" to judge a players potential and character, then they are not very good at their job. To me it seems like "premiership proven" is the lazy managers choice.
 
Young over Mata was the strangest one. He'd probably have chosen us at the time as well. Not trying to sign one of the numerous foreign midfielders available is also really annoying and weird. Our scouts in Europe have been pretty hopeless recently to be honest.
 
shaggy said:
Young over Mata was the strangest one. He'd probably have chosen us at the time as well. Not trying to sign one of the numerous foreign midfielders available is also really annoying and weird. Our scouts in Europe have been pretty hopeless recently to be honest.
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How on earth we've failed to really go for the Spanish market in terms of players has surprised me, yes we get it Fergie you like wingers from Portugal but midfieders from the European nations is where we should've been looking.. its Englands major weak spot in terms of producing players and yet we refuse to look abroad.
 
Goooose said:
The PL is the priority. It's safer to buy PL proven players than it is to spend millions on someone who could flop.
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Why would a great player from another league flop? Veron isn't really a great example because he didn't fit our style and we had nowhere to play him to make the best out of his abilities (much like Kagawa currently).
 
SAF always went for English players and PL proven players over foreign players if he could, even if the foreign players were arguably more talented. Really there were only a few exceptions such as Veron, Kleberson and Forlan so you can understand his reasoning behind it.

EDIT: Discounting youngsters, he had no problem bringing in the most talented youngsters.
 
We probably signed Ashley Young for the same reason City signed the likes of Jack Rodwell and Scott Sinclair. There are rules in place that make it necessary. As it goes Young is a much better player than the kind City went for.
 
ye we have definitely had a focus on the proven PL player in recent years - in the past Fergie recruited a lot from abroad but there was quite mixed results so I think that was the reason he started to focus more at home.

Dont think we can read much into Moyes' transfer targets as yet - need to wait until next summer for that.

said this in Fellaini thread ...

Rood said:
Going off topic a bit and this could have its own thread, but this is the way I see it:

Firstly, you have the top teir of players who are 'world class', we as a club rarely buy from this category but do have players who end up being that (Keane that you mention for example).

Then a step below you have what I am talking about when I say 'top class', regular starters for the top clubs in Europe usually some record of winning things and/or playing in CL/WC etc.
We buy at this level now and again e.g. Hargreaves back then and Kagawa recently.

Next you have the category that a lot of our money has recently been spent on - proven PL players with potential to improve e.g. Young, Valencia etc.
At the moment Fellaini is in this category and when we bought him Carrick was too, but he proved himself at a higher level and yes I would call him 'top class' now (as I would Fletcher).

Finally, we have obviously spent a lot of time and money recruiting some of the most talented youngsters in the world with a view to moulding them into world and top class players. Had some big successes like Ronaldo and Rafael. For the midfield we did have Pogba but lost him and also a lot of cash went on Anderson who has yet to deliver consistently.


So there you have it, clearly there will be some overlap in categories between players but that is generally the way I see it. This summer we have tried for a Fabregas (arguably world class and clearly top class) and Thiago (talented youth) but it didnt happen. So in the end it looks like we focus on the proven PL player in Fellaini and if he was to reach the level of Carrick or Fletcher than I would be quite happy with that.
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Jaybezia said:
Nsis...
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I was thinking you are talking about us picking from EPL clubs only. That's not the case, then how can you say that we are limiting our scope? We tried signing a payer not in the PL who also has PL experience. Now that's a bonus. If we are looking in spain for players then atleast for those cases we can say our scope is not limited, now that player has PL experience. That's only better, isn't it?
Also Fabregas played for a top club which you were not considering in the OP "Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams".
Hence I would re-emphasize that we can't really make the hypothesis that you have stated.
 
one of the reasons for a preference to sign an english player in general can also be the fact that they are more likely to stick around for a longer duration
 
MDFC Manager said:
With Moyes, I'm pretty sure that the prem preference is short term only (possibly only this window). And Fergie did attempt to buy Hazard and Lucas for big amounts of money just last season.

Also you forgot Kagawa who didn't come cheap at all.

All in all, we might have a slight prem bias but that's IMO the most sensible way to go anyway.
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Yea, as I said, Moyes did not adopt this view at Everton (probably because at the lower end of the market, British players are even less value for money than at the top end). I agree that we went for Hazard and Lucas, although we eventually appear to have lost out on them, or at least Lucas, for not trusting to spend what it took on them. This may be justified, although I believe we may have been more willing to stretch for a PL proven player.

I didn't include Kagawa only because he cost us just over £10m I think. Not really big money, and there are no British/PL alternatives anywhwere near him for that price. We prioritised Smalling/Jones over Varane too it seemed, and while we don't know how good they will all end up - I think the decision was largely influenced by the fact that Varane was playing abroad.
 
ryan_forlan said:
I was thinking you are talking about us picking from EPL clubs only. That's not the case, then how can you say that we are limiting our scope? We tried signing a payer not in the PL who also has PL experience. Now that's a bonus. If we are looking in spain for players then atleast for those cases we can say our scope is not limited, now that player has PL experience. That's only better, isn't it?
Also Fabregas played for a top club which you were not considering in the OP "Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams".
Hence I would re-emphasize that we can't really make the hypothesis that you have stated.
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Wait until you realise I am not the OP... :(
 
ryan_forlan said:
I was thinking you are talking about us picking from EPL clubs only. That's not the case, then how can you say that we are limiting our scope? We tried signing a payer not in the PL who also has PL experience. Now that's a bonus. If we are looking in spain for players then atleast for those cases we can say our scope is not limited, now that player has PL experience. That's only better, isn't it?
Also Fabregas played for a top club which you were not considering in the OP "Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams".
Hence I would re-emphasize that we can't really make the hypothesis that you have stated.
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This was for you Rozay
 
Moyes probably prefers PL proven players at this stage because he doesn't wanna be taking too many risks with his first couple of signings... it's not like pressure isn't on him already to deliver.
 
ryan_forlan said:
I was thinking you are talking about us picking from EPL clubs only. That's not the case, then how can you say that we are limiting our scope? We tried signing a payer not in the PL who also has PL experience. Now that's a bonus. If we are looking in spain for players then atleast for those cases we can say our scope is not limited, now that player has PL experience. That's only better, isn't it?
Also Fabregas played for a top club which you were not considering in the OP "Given that we generally will not be taking players off the very best PL teams".
Hence I would re-emphasize that we can't really make the hypothesis that you have stated.
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You are glossing over the fact that Cesc is PL proven. I am sure the fact that he is PL proven played a huge part in us trying to sign him. I doubt we have wanted to spend big money on him due to him being so brilliant for Barcelona for two years. We also haven't tried to spend big money on any other Spanish midfielder who has not played in England, and there are plenty of good ones.

Also, 'generally' means just that - 'generally'. We do not 'generally' try to sign players from Barcelona, or clubs of similar stature. The cynic in me would suggest that with a £25m bid, we haven't genuinely tried to do so this summer either.
 
Sarni said:
Why would a great player from another league flop? Veron isn't really a great example because he didn't fit our style and we had nowhere to play him to make the best out of his abilities (much like Kagawa currently).
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Shevchenko, Rebrov, Juan Pablo Angel, Forlan. Veron wasn't brilliant at Chelsea either.
 
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