So, I’ll try to give my balanced assessment of the transfer window.
Let’s start with the
outs:
- Sanchez 10/10 – It’s a miracle we got him off the books.
- Smalling 9/10 – Got a decent price, maybe not what we’d get if he’d gone to a PL club, but his heart was set on Roma, and he was a good servant to the club and I don’t have a bad word to say about Mike, I mean Chris. All the best.
- 8/10 Loans for Chong, Periera and Dalot. I suppose some would’ve preferred permanents, but hopefully they’ll get some regular football, and improve and either we can sell them on for a decent fee or who knows maybe one impresses enough to come back and claim a slot.
Rating the
not-outs (Unless a deal is made with championship teams):
- NR (Not Rated) – Lingard. I personally think he’s running down his contract to go out on free transfer and maximize his salary, fair play to him. He gets a lot of stick, but he’s far and away not the worst player on our bench (not saying he’s United quality for a title winning team, mind) and he’s on the salary he is because when he get it his career looked like it was really taking off. It just never did. I doubt clubs would’ve come in for him, they’d be waiting to get him on a free next year. Hard to fault United here, there was probably little to no interest, and he’s an ok squad player for one more year. If his contract is extended this rating becomes “Fire and Brimstone/10”
- NR - Phil. Poor Phil, injured again and apparently holding off on another surgery, in case he could recover and a buyer could be found. He was never going to end his contract, and it’d poor form for the club to terminate it (it’d cost a fortune and the club should support him and his recovery efforts to back up and playing again so it’s possible he could find a new club or fill in the squad). The real issue was his previous contract extension, which was the height of stupidity by the club and/or manager.
- 1/10 – Rojo. Now I’m starting to get a little bit annoyed with the club. Apparently he was happy in Argentina and wanted to stay there. We bloody well should’ve found a way to make that happen, even if we did have to negotiate a pay-off. He really should have gone. Maybe something can still happen with Chinese or MLS club. Again, the real issue was his previous contract extension, which was the height of stupidity by the club and/or manager.
- “Fire and Brimstone/10” – Romero. It makes absolutely no sense to keep a GK who won’t play, is obviously angry and upset with the club, and could possibly be disruptive or toxic. What’s the point here? Pay him and ask him not to show up for training because he could have gone to Everton or wherever. This makes no sense. We’re already paying close to half a million pounds a year for GKs in De Gea and Henderson (which is highly questionable in itself, mind). Maybe there will be a mutual termination or he’ll go to China, MLS or the Championship.
- Other people may have wanted more outs, but I disagree and won’t cover those. If anything, I’d have tried to sell Bailly, too. Yes, even more than Lingard.
The Ins:
- Van der Beek (8/10): Looks a tidy player so far and good coverage for Pogba/Bruno. The only problem is he looks like a luxury signing compared to other signings. If there is a plan, its that we want to ensure we keep an attacking presence in the midfield.
- Telles (8/10): I personally think RB was a priority, unlike some, and he looks a really great option to challenge or replace Shaw.
- Cavani (5/10): I’m hedging my bets because, maybe he’ll be a hit, or maybe he’ll bust. I think he’ll be better than Falcao and Higuain, but not Ibrahimović. Best case, I’m actually thinking about Giroud at Chelsea (I’d bump it up to a six or seven). Worst case, another Falcao (zero).
- Traore (NR) – I simply don’t know enough. Will he be the next Ronaldo and we’ve played a blinder, or the next Memphis?
- Pellistri (NR) – Again, just don’t know enough to rate this.
The not-ins:
Now, to be fair, one of the things I do really like is that Ole established a pretty clear best 11 for us by the end of last season, the first we’ve had since LvG, and one to be excited about:
GK: De Gea
LB: Shaw
CB: Maguire, Lindelöf
RB: AWB
MF: Matic, Pogba, Bruno
FWD: Rashford, Martial, Greenwood
And I would have ranked our priorities as:
- DM – Matic can’t (shouldn’t) play every week, and is getting older. We need a strong challenger here and I didn’t see Fred or McT filling it.
- RB – Oooh, controversial. I don’t trust Shaw, he’s always getting hurt, and Williams struggled at times.
- FWD – We needed someone to rotate with Greenwood, Rashford and Martial. I’m not so inclined to prefer a proper #10, as Ole has shown very little inclination to switch to a plan B (something that he can rightly be judged and criticized on)
- AMF – We needed someone to cover for Bruno and/or Pogba. If they are injured, our ability to dictate attacking from midfield dries up and we lose our edge.
So how did we do addressing these positions?
- DM (“Fire and Brimstone/10”) – Nothing, nada, kaput. I’m very concerned about us going into the season with no clear backup or replacement if Matic gets hurt. This was poor, we have to hold our breaths and hope Fred, McT and Garner (is he still here or did he go on loan?) kick on.
- RB (8/10) – Golf clap. Shaw either kicks on and stays healthy or it’s the Telles show.
- FWD (6/10) – I avoided talking about it until now. Sancho would’ve made this a 9/10. Although I worry that some people were so convinced by Sancho that they’ve lost all perspective. Sancho is good, I’d have wanted him (still do), but … he’s not a sure thing like Ronaldo to Real Madrid yet. Heck, I’m not even sure he’s as sure a thing as Eden Hazard to Real Madrid. People have really gotten worked up and angry at this and some have lost all sense of perspective.
- The guy on Sky Sports today said something that made the most sense, apparently we got a price from Dortmund, pre-COVID, and we went back and tried to negotiate that price down after COVID, but Dortmund was having none of it.
So we didn’t get Sancho, but we did get Pellistri, Traore and Cavani. Pellistri seems to be longer term project, Traore doesn’t arrive until Jan, and Cavani is Option B, I guess? It’s really hard to judge this one, we did reinforce the positions at least.
- AMF (8/10) – Donny looks the business and should be a great rotation option for Bruno and Pogba, along with Fred and McT for Pogba.
However, something happened in the last few weeks… Our central defenders have seemingly crashed and burned. I think a lot of us went into the window after last season thinking, “Well, we have Maguire and Lindelöf, maybe we’ll get another young prospect to compete with Lindelöf, then we have Axel, Mengi, probably Bailly, maybe Phil can play a couple of games later in the season…”. We may still be over-reacting to the first few matches, but it looks like this could be really big issue. The club did not address it in the window, so far.
Other random thoughts:
- People getting all wound-up that we didn’t sign some players until deadline day means we’re desperate or panic-buying should calm down. It makes sense to make some moves very late, so we strike immediately and don’t let other big clubs catch wind of our moves and give the selling clubs and agents time to start up a bidding war. Not all deadline day activity is desperation, some of it is a tactical advantage.
- Cavani does look like a panic buy, though. Although who knows, maybe he and his agent were holding off til the last day to evaluate every option he had and choose the best for him.
- The Dembele stuff, if true, looks like a truly catastrophic sign of panic buying and poor judgment that makes me really question WTF this club is doing.
Overall rating (6/10): Hard to argue with the outs, some of the Ins are exciting, but we didn’t get a DM or CB.
