First - completed incoming signings. Early signs are that we have done a great job in finally addressing the right back situation. Don't want to get ahead of myself, but Wan-Bissaka has been immense defensively in pre-season, so my hopes are high that he will represent a substantial improvement when the season starts. I don't feel like we've seen loads from him going forward, but he at least hasn't seemed to suffer from vertigo and seems happy enough maintaining high positions on the wing when we are in attack.
The Maguire transfer (assuming he passes the medical etc.) seems decent. A centre back to play with Lindelof who is defensively reliably as well as decent playing the ball was needed so it's another signing that ticks the right boxes in terms of our squad's shortcomings. £80 odd million seems expensive to me. I'm not sure we could have got Maguire for any less - we were always going to pay a Premier League premium, but it's a bit disappointing that our scouting network couldn't identify any other players with the qualities we were looking for. Doesn't feel like a dead cert success to me, which you would hope for in an £80m defender, but I'm reasonably satisfied.
Not convinced by the Daniel James signing. I've only really seen him in our pre-season games but I'm not convinced he has enough quality on the ball to make it at United. Yes he has lightning pace, but I don't really feel that our pace in wide forward positions is something that has been holding us back. He seems to specialise in perhaps the only position where we don't need reinforcements i.e. wide on the left, as Martial, Rashford, Sanchez and Gomes seems like more than enough competition for that position. Basically I'm a little bit worried that this one is a product of the old boys' scouting network and he's going to fall short.
However, beyond the incoming transfers that have gone through, there are a glaring holes in the squad that we have failed to address: foremost among them central midfield and right wing, though arguably centre forward too. We are embarrassingly short in the centre of midfield- at the moment the first team options are Pogba (top class though can't be relied on to carry us), Fred (yet to prove he's capable contributing much), McTominay (continues to look promising but still unproven and inexperienced) and Matic (clearly has been a decent player in the past but looking quite sluggish these days). That's essentially one central midfielder who is definitely of the required quality, and even he can be
temperamental. That's painfully thin even if we are playing two in midfield - two injuries or suspensions could leave us without a single substitute. But that's assuming that this two man midfield plan survives contact with the reality of Premier League football, which is far from certain. If we have to switch back to three in midfield, which to me seems quite likely, we have three players and one substitute. Before injuries. It's farcical. And that's looking at it primarily numerically - thinking in terms of qualities, it is clear we are lacking players with the capacity to break up attacks and make play from deep. Pogba aside we are worryingly short of players who can break down a stubborn defence. With Herrera we lost one of our best midfielders, and we were short even before that. We ought to have signed at least two midfielders, at least one of whom should immediately improve our first eleven. Instead we have signed no one. This leaves us substantially worse off than last year, in a position which was already a seriously concerning weakness for us.
Right wing/right forward is the other major hole - it looks like we are settling for another season on Lingard, Rashford and Mata playing out of position there.
Finally, less urgently but still of concern is up front. For me Lukaku has never fully convinced there for us. If we were a well run club then two years of being first choice should be considered enough time to prove yourself, and if you haven't staked your claim by that point you should be moved on and replaced. Obviously this kind of decisive action always seemed like a bit of a stretch for the current United management. He's not appalling, so it's not the end of the world if he stays, but if so we'll have missed the chance to improve.
That brings us to outgoings. Valencia leaving is uncontroversial - he has been a good player for us in the past, but has looked well past it for a while now and we were right to say "Thanks for your service but it's time to move on". Herrera is a totally different matter. For my money he was one only a handful of first team players who I definitely would rather not have lost. It seems like we should have had him signed up to a new contract long ago, and if money really was an intractable obstacle then we had plenty of notice and we ought to have been doing some meticulous planning about how to replace him. It seems very much like we assumed that he would find leaving us unthinkable and have done next to zero thinking about how to replace him.
We should mention players who it is good to have held on to, namely De Gea and Pogba. Both are world class, and in our current state (i.e. out of the Champions League and out of contention for the Premier League) the chances of replacing them with similar quality would have been almost zero - Pogba in particular. It would have been terrible timing to lose them so some credit is due to the club for holding firm to keeping them here.
Lastly there are players that we have failed to get rid of. There is a high level of bloat in our current squad. Whilst, as mentioned, we are seriously lacking in central midfield, the situation in central defence is ridiculous. If Maguire signs we will have 7 first team centre backs. We ought to have been able to move on two of Rojo, Jones, Bailly and Smalling.
Most of them have at least some qualities to recommend them, but none of them are really good enough to be in our first team and we ought to be able to be decisive enough to identify players have had more than enough chances to prove themselves capable of being top class and have fallen short, and sell them. Having some redeeming features as a player should not be enough to keep you hanging around in the Man United squad for half a decade or more. The Darmian situation is ridiculous - it hasn't worked out, it's a shame, just take the hit and let the poor lad go. He hardly even plays so doesn't even need replacing.
With Mata and Young I can see the case that it's good to keep them around for their experience and professionalism, though it would be more unequivocally a good idea in a squad that wasn't so bloated elsewhere. Lukaku I've covered above - ideally we should have identified a replacement and moved him on.
It's hard to know how much to blame this lack of dynamism on this transfer window in particular - clearly a large part of the problem is paying high wages to players who don't deserve them, making them impossible to move on. That's very clearly the case with Sanchez, who has clearly been a failure here, but who I never had any hope of us moving on this summer. Barring a miracle we are stuck with him clogging up the squad and wage bill for the foreseeable future.
Also it's clearly unrealistic to get rid of all 9 players I've mentioned in one window (plus Valencia and Herrera) but we should have been aiming to move on at least half of them.
In summary - we've done well to sign Wan-Bissaka and hopefully Maguire, and to hold on to De Gea and Pogba. However, we needed to make more additions to reliably improve on last season - above all in central midfield. We have also failed to move on a bunch of players who clearly have no future at a top club, and have a limited amount to contribute to one rebuilding towards being one.
If I had to give a score out of 10 I'd probably go for 5.
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but yeah I'm looking forward to seeing how our new look defense pans out and obviously it's always exciting seeing academy prospects like Gomes and Greenwood breaking into the first team. At the very least our playing style should be tolerable and watchable.