Selling Fred was a mistake

Gordon Godot said:
No he didnt he used to pass it into touch from 5 yards. Thats why he ended up in Turkey
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I said at times. I remember him playing an absolute peach of a through ball for Bruno last season. Most of the time he was very hit and miss but it’s still better than anything McTominay offers up, who is usually marking himself out the game by hiding behind opposition players and his passing is even worse.
 
Not having him is a negative at this particular moment in time, hopefully over the course of the season we'll get the benefits with Amrabat and Mainoo coming in. If we were going to keep one of him or McTominay though, it should've been Fred.
 
I think he was a bit of a cheat code, when we were playing crap and needed the energy upfront, Fred was the man who brought out the best from the other team parts whilst having low to average attacking/creative outputs himself.

He offered all the energy of a controlling CAM but very small G/A values himself and nor was his passing that effective for us. He was imo a beautiful player for us for being an excellent professional player and training hard to get better.

But age not being on his side meant he was to be changed and that's called future squad planning and that's why it wasn't a mistake to sell him. I'm sure Mason Mount will prove to be just as popular with the fans once he gets going and finds his role in the squad.
 
Was he one of our best players? No.

Was he one of our worst players? No, he wasn’t.

He had his uses and shouldn’t have been the first out. Like DDG. Like Blind before them and like Welbeck. We still sell the wrong players, and sell poorly so we don’t get value either.
 
Plant0x84 said:
Hard to tell when they are all injured. Even just from the perspective of being available for selection he’s better than them all right now!
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Thats pretty short term thinking.
 
Gordon Godot said:
Dont know how you could be a fan of such a poor player. The odd 'good' game in that he ran around a lot and didnt hoof it into touch was not enough
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Great attitude and when used in his actual role (Ragnick and ETH put him as a CM and not a sitter) he was good without being amazing. Chipped in with goals and assists pretty regularly the last 2 seasons and was less of a liability in that role.

Who do you like as a player for reference?
 
I was a Fred enjoyer but it's not like we had golden years with him in the team. It was just as porous.
 
Plant0x84 said:
Was he one of our best players? No.

Was he one of our worst players? No, he wasn’t.

He had his uses and shouldn’t have been the first out. Like DDG. Like Blind before them and like Welbeck. We still sell the wrong players, and sell poorly so we don’t get value either.
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Occasionally

And most of the time.
 
Love when people just go goldfish mode, mistake is not getting rid of way more players, bunch of leeching pricks.
 
We always need depth in midfield. We were never going to overhaul the midfield this summer. It made much more sense, considering it usually costs a few million to loan players anyway, to keep Fred for a year. A good option for fifth/sixth choice
 
Better to sell him. If not half of our mf would be injured we would not miss him one bit
 
Putting out the fire in the kitchen was a mistake because the toilet is also on fire.
 
Let me guess. Another season of McFred, loan Mejbri and Kobbie with less than 200 minutes this season. Call it a progress.

This club sometimes deserve the worst for the sake of the lesson learned the hard way, and we're doing it to ourselves at times.

Perhaps Fred could stay, if there was a strategy that was opting against signing two midfielders past their best, one after a heart attack, I might add.
 
Selling fred and keeping mctominay was a mistake, we got sod all for fred but could have got 35 million for mctominay who is not really trusted by eth and when he does play him it is in position that is not suited to him
 
Idxomer said:
Our only high-energy number 8 shouldn't have been sold and definitely not while keeping the likes of McTominay.

The hope is Hannibal could replace him but today's involvement seems more like desperation than a planned move.
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Fred is 30 and had one year left of his contract. Pluss, he was not a regular starter and wanted to go. In hindsight you could say Fred shouldn't have been sold when Mount and Amrabat - the two players that was meant to replace him - both are injured. But who could know that. Imagine we didn't sell Fred and he himself was the one being out injured.
 
Not buying better replacements was the only mistake... maybe Amrabat will be
 
Selling Fred can never be a mistake, he didn't have the level for a club of United's stature.
If they had signed midfielders with a great performance nobody would remember Fred.
 
Borys said:
The only question is how is Eriksen a better squad option than Fred. And Eriksen will be here for another 2 seasons.
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Yep, even if we replaced him with a better player I would've still kept him as a squad player over Eriksen and McTominay.
 
Don_Johan14 said:
Selling Fred can never be a mistake, he didn't have the level for a club of United's stature.
If they had signed midfielders with a great performance nobody would remember Fred.
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It's not like we're talking about Djemba-Djemba. Fred was more than good enough to play here. Our midfield play so far has been well below standard and having Fred as an option would've helped.
 
Idxomer said:
Yep, even if we replaced him with a better player I would've still kept him as a squad player over Eriksen and McTominay.
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I love Eriksen but I don't see a role for him anymore sadly. We can't have such a defensive liability in midfield. McTominay staying is baffling, I would assume we didn't think we can get Amrabat.
Fred was 30 but at the same time he was one of a very few players who could run for 90', never injured, always putting a shift in. Clearly ETH was not a fan though.
 
I had a soft spot for Fred. He was definitely a better option than McTominay, and he could fill a useful role in certain situations. He could also spend 90 minutes passing to the opponent, but that was the duality of Fred.

Without including Amrabat, he'd comfortably be our best pressing midfielder, though, wouldn't he? None of the other midfielders have his combination of mobility, aggression, and tackling ability.
 
Fred as a cog in a large squad is fine. But he was on superstar money unfortunately. We could have kept him if we'd been reasonable when offering him a contract initially.

Ironically we've made the same mistake again with his replacement, Mount.

If you don't behave, you don't get nice things.
 
Raoul said:
It's not like we're talking about Djemba-Djemba. Fred was more than good enough to play here. Our midfield play so far has been well below standard and having Fred as an option would've helped.
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No, selling Fred was 1000% the right thing to do
Not signing a upgrade in time is what the mistake is
 
Idxomer said:
Yep, even if we replaced him with a better player I would've still kept him as a squad player over Eriksen and McTominay.
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As we saw from the Fulham bid, McTominay doesn't want to leave. Certainly not for a midtable club.

Eriksen has little to no resale value.

Getting 10mil euros, rising to 15mil, was decent business for Fred. He was never anywhere near the level we needed.
 
For the sake of £8m we should have kept him.

He was a damn good rotational option. One of our best players last season and was by far the best choice next to Cas in big games.
 
SirScholes said:
No, selling Fred was 1000% the right thing to do
Not signing a upgrade in time is what the mistake is
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Amrabat is the replacement. Obviously would have liked him in earlier, but i think United played it pretty well to leave it late and get him on a loan to buy deal, thus pushing the FFP burdon to next year.
 
Fred wasn't good enough for us that is clear, but to start with 2 aging central mids against good opponents is suicidal.
We needed at least another starter next to Case and a back-up(which is probably Amrabat). Seeing Eriksen starting so many games is really depressing.
 
GMoore23 said:
For the sake of £8m we should have kept him.

He was a damn good rotational option. One of our best players last season and was by far the best choice next to Cas in big games.
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Its FFP. Sell him for 8mil and free up 120k a week. That has allowed us to bring in Amrabat.

No one, at this point, is arguing we should have kept Fred at 30 rather than signing Amrabat at 27.
 
SirScholes said:
No, selling Fred was 1000% the right thing to do
Not signing a upgrade in time is what the mistake is
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If we didn't sign an upgrade then it was obviously not the right thing to sell Fred. Our midfield performances so far only reinforce this. Obviously if we bought a De Jong or similar player, it would be different, but so far, all we have is a loan and Mount (who is obviously a very different skillset player).
 
gaffs said:
Its FFP. Sell him for 8mil and free up 120k a week. That has allowed us to bring in Amrabat.

No one, at this point, is arguing we should have kept Fred at 30 rather than signing Amrabat at 27.
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We should have taken the £30m for McTominay and Fred probably would've taken a pay cut.
What is he earning now at Fenerbahce?
 
gaffs said:
Its FFP. Sell him for 8mil and free up 120k a week. That has allowed us to bring in Amrabat.

No one, at this point, is arguing we should have kept Fred at 30 rather than signing Amrabat at 27.
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What's baffling is Mount's signing
 
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