Only good thing that happened this year was selling Fred. There’s a reason we only got 8M for him, he’s a liability. Constantly smiling and waving after giving away ridiculous passes. Ok we haven’t improved but if we could ship out a few more of the players that don’t mind losing we might be able to start building a proper culture.
Selling Fred was a mistake
- Thread starter Idxomer
- Start date
That makes no sense, and yes we would be better off.
Is this really where are? Regretting selling Fred?
He is no worse than Mount.
He made a fairly important contribution last season and made over 50 appearances. We've effectively replaced that with nothing so yes selling him was a mistake.
Its one thing to not think he's good enough for a team that wants to challenge for titles, which is valid. It's another to completely ignore that he was a pretty important piece of our current squad and that selling him only made sense if we replaced him in some way with something better. Its probably somewhere in the realms of lunacy at this point to try and claim we have done that
Its one thing to not think he's good enough for a team that wants to challenge for titles, which is valid. It's another to completely ignore that he was a pretty important piece of our current squad and that selling him only made sense if we replaced him in some way with something better. Its probably somewhere in the realms of lunacy at this point to try and claim we have done that
I’d have kept him. His energy was useful even if his passing ability was shite. Now our so called midfield is one paced
High energy does t make a decent player. His passing was woeful and often embarrassing. He was caught in possession on a regular basis. Most games he was a complete liability but every now and again he was ok. Not premier league standard. Hannibal can do the same job with better passing.
This thread should be deleted as it's pants. Fred was a liabilty.
Selling him wasn't really a mistake, but selling him and replacing him with Amrabat was.
Fred was erratic and inconsistent, but came up with goals and assists on a fairly regular basis. I'd much rather still have him in the engine room instead of what we have in there currently.
Fred was erratic and inconsistent, but came up with goals and assists on a fairly regular basis. I'd much rather still have him in the engine room instead of what we have in there currently.
Can Selling Fred and Buying Fred both be a mistake?
He was sold for less than 10m EUR. We could've extended his deal for another season and sell him for the same amount easily next summer. Even if he was sold for 5m EUR after a season it would've been a better deal than relying on two midfielders on a clear decline and a two natural #10s.
McTominay was the one with actual value and could've been sold if Ten Hag wanted to. But the truth is ETH wanted Fred gone and McTominay to stay - good for him, Scott is now core of the team.
Mount is a much better footballer than Fred. If he can stay fit it will show.
None of them are good enough they should have been offloaded and replaced years ago. Under no circumstances should Fred have gotten a new 12 month deal for me.
Think there may have been more to the Fred situation. It was confirmed he was 100% leaving the club for a while by Romano, and I wonder if it was a wish for proper playing time on his side too
Our 3 best performances last season (note the man of the match in each):
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/post-match-vs-manchester-city.475031/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/post-match-vs-tottenham-hotspur.473539/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/post-match-vs-barcelona.475808/
It's more of a bad decision given he'd actually be useful in this ridiculous system Ten Hag plays.
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/post-match-vs-manchester-city.475031/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/post-match-vs-tottenham-hotspur.473539/
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/post-match-vs-barcelona.475808/
It's more of a bad decision given he'd actually be useful in this ridiculous system Ten Hag plays.
The sad fact that if he was still here he could possibly be our best midfielder with casimero being way off the pace for some time now, mctominay is not a midfielder, eriksen legs are not fit for the premier league, Mount is not a midfielder, same with bruno, then there is mainoo who we have only seen on a few occasions so hard to truly judge him.
that is how bad recruitment has been under ten hag.
that is how bad recruitment has been under ten hag.
Selling Fred was definitely a mistake. Even if we'd signed a better alternative he was still a valuable squad member.
The biggest thing for me regards Fred was his world class work rate and on field character. He never shied away from the ball and appeared to enjoy the challenge of facing better sides instead of shitting the bed like most our other players.
I'd have kept Fred in the squad as I believe he's exactly the type of character we need so much more of in our squad. We need players like him to set the work ethic example to future signings.
The biggest thing for me regards Fred was his world class work rate and on field character. He never shied away from the ball and appeared to enjoy the challenge of facing better sides instead of shitting the bed like most our other players.
I'd have kept Fred in the squad as I believe he's exactly the type of character we need so much more of in our squad. We need players like him to set the work ethic example to future signings.
The problem is not that we sold Fred
The problem is we did not replace him with anyone who improved our squad.
The problem is we did not replace him with anyone who improved our squad.
Mistake or not is hard to tell but one thing I don't trust ETH with are transfers, he is really poor at assessing player quality.
My take as well.
Fair points.
His energy was fantastic. Playing it down like this crazy. Its fine not to like a player but wrongly attributing him seems unnecessary to me.
If he can, why have we never seen that? Just like the poster above, I think this is just a bad faith attempt to downplay Fred as a player. Its fine to dislike him. People don't have to come up with fake rationalizations to back it up.
Good point. I also thought about that as well. Freds energy might have been really useful in one of the 8ish position that are now taken by McTom and Bruno. Not saying we would definitely be better off but I think it is fair to say Fred would be a better fit for it. I think, RR used him in a position like that, didn't he? To good effect, this high turnover thing would have been great for him. And I would argue that he would be just as useful going back as Bruno is and certainly better going back than McTom is.
That being said, when I thought about it, I also questioned myself, why Donny hasn't been given a shot at that position. After all, he was one of those 8ish players in ETHs Ajax system. Not that I expected him to be very convincing there but it must have been disheartening for the player seeing the club finally shifting towards a setup where you have shined in the past only to realize that you are not going to be given a shot because fecking Scott McTominay is clogging up the place...
That is such a new take on things. Why don't you elaborate on it?
As frustrating as Fred was our midfield is now one big gaping hole every game.
He's not missed then, because it was like that when he played.
Remarkable how many false statements you've managed to make in so few words. Astonishing, really. This is from 20/21 season where we ended up 2nd. Somehow, it's not PL standard. Literally makes most passes, highest pass completion rate and progressive passes except Bruno of all our midfielders. In addition to that, he was one of the best tackling midfielders and read the game with a high number of interceptions.
Forget regretting letting him go, he should never have been brought in the first place. Truly awful signing.
The problem isn't selling Fred, is buying Mount.
Selling him wasn't a mistake in an of itself. The mistake was replacing him with another mediocre player. We constantly take sideways and backwards steps and pay a premium for it. That's the real issue. This just leads to viewing the sales as mistakes with the benefit of hindsight
That's the spirit
He was definitely good enough for a squad player. Obviously it's an extraordinary situation that Casemiro, Eriksen and Mount are out, but Fred in this season circumstances is no worse squad player that Eriksen.
I was wondering about this as well. Eric clearly has a thing for those kind of players (Sabitzer, Mount, now McTominay play the same role) and yet DVB wasn't even given a chance - even though this is actually his "nominal" position.
It's ok we have mctominay in there putting himself about 
)
)As an 8? Yes, since Amrabat isn't an 8. As a sitting DM Amrabat is clearly above Fred. I trust Amrabat not to give the ball away under pressure or be pushed off it in our 3rd of the pitch. I never did that with Fred.
Between Amrabat, Case and Mainoo I feel we're finally good in the DM position. The problems are with the formation and how the double 8s/10s are working out. Alongside the fact that our wingers and strikers have proven absolutely toothless this season.
Fred last season under Ten Hag played as 8/10, exchanging places with Eriksen. Casemiro and McTominay were the DMs. Fred was supposed to be replaced by Mount, not Amrabat. Amrabat was about adding depth to the DM position and supposedly replacing McTominay, who again played as DM last season. The only reason Amrabat is on loan and not permanent is because we didn't succeed in selling McTominay (who was on the market) for our asking price, to raise the funds.
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Schrödinger’s Fred.
All that is fine if you only you could judge a player on those few stats. But we had 5 years of Fred and for people to still think he's good enough is baffling. It's like Dalot, McT and AWB, these players are just ok, they just don't have any outstanding qualities. Fred could run around and tackle people outside of that, he had no other redeeming qualities.
Positioning, awareness, how he took his first touch (all too often closed off the better passing options), the choice and quality of his passing. All things we could clearly see he was poor at.
Just so your position is clear. Are you now saying he is just okay? Along with Dalot, McT and AWB? Or you are maintaining that he (and possibly these others listed) aren’t Premier League standard not just Manchester United standard?
An in-form Mason Mount is an immediately better footballer than an in-form Fred.
And he would have prevented that? Methinks you're ignoring how easy it was for opponents to breeze past him in a more solid system last season. He'd have just been worse now.
He would've looked worse because of the system we play now (just like the rest of the team). But you are right.
Same way we could've used Mount in Fred role (as a second midfielder) if we wanted to. But we don't.
I hear that a lot, but inconsistency doesn't mean you're a bad passer. He actually had quite a decent pass in him. His problem was that he failed simple passes a bit too frequently, but most of PL midfielders do, but you don't notice that as much because they don't play for United and you don't get annoyed when they do make bad passes. He had surprisingly good vision too, and did some quick intricate passing between the lines.
His positional awareness is probably his biggest weakness, but then again, it's not his fault. He is not a holding midfielder, despite us trying to make him into one. He is an energetic box-to-box player, and there is no surprise he started scoring and assisting more in his last season when we played him further forward, and not as a holding midfielder.
Methinks you haven't seen McTominay play. Fred was much better at pressing and ball recoveries than McTominay. The latter is a passenger defensively. I cannot see how Fred would have been worse overall, expect maybe scoring goals specifically.