The Banter Era

[Maticmaker]

I would stipulate the following as 5 regular occurring (annoying) features of our play for sometime now and that never seem to improve;

1/Attempts at playing out from the back (are becoming laughable)!
2/Constantly playing with wingers who always seem to want the ball 'to feet' (so they can cut in on the diagonal) and rarely if ever try to get to the bye line and cross!
3/Trying to take free kicks quickly in opponents final third/edge of their box, most of which seem to finish up with our keeper (only the player taking kick seems to know what he's attempting) or to set the opposition up for transition!
4/Never seeming to think about sending one of our players to stand on the bye-line at throw-ins in the opponents final third, even though it's not an offside position and therefore presents the opposition with a problem!
5/Our scoring rate from corner kicks is... abysmal !

 

[Dr. T]

I feel like supposedly restructuring our entire footballing hierarchy only to then give the manager more control than ever before over who we sign is gonna end up being in this thread.

While I don't think giving the manager carte blanche is a good idea at all, could you imagine the internal discussions about who is the most qualified person at United to identify potential transfers.

ETH could (rightly) say to John Murtough "who am I supposed to listen to? YOU? What pedigree, experience and competence do you have of identifying players?"

 

[Dr. T]

Contracts.

• Extensions given to Ole and Jose the same year they were sacked.
• Phil Jones signing an extension in 2019 only to barely play and collecting wages for another 4 years
• De Gea made the highest paid GK (by far) for no sensible reason
• Brandon Williams on 60k+ a week. Dean Henderson on 100k a week. Again, no evidence why these were required to be given
• Mata, De Gea, Lingard, Jones and Tuanzebe, all recent United players, are currently free agents with no takers, not even Saudi
• 80 million on Maguire is laughable. What is more laughable is paying him a sort of wage where we can't even recoup any money since no club is willing to pay a fee and those wages. Seems like the same template for Sancho and Antony too in the future.

This is what happens when a club is ran by accountants.They probably sell the value of the squad as an optimistic market value + overall value of their contracts. And we keep renewing this sorry state of affairs to maintain value.

Pure Accounting Bantz.

 

[Todd]

-35 year old Jonathan Evans playing for United 8 years after we deemed him not good enough to play for United

 

[Mubs]

Surely the headline 'Jadon Sancho removed from Utd WhatsApp group' qualifies?

FMD

What a mess this season is. Onward and upward from here. Feck the haters.

 

[sugar_kane]

Incredible, although he strikes me more of a Snapchat guy anyway.

Think our kits not fitting the players should be added here as well.

 

[Lentwood]

Turning up to sign Herrera only to find we have been negotiating with the wrong agents

Being fooled into signing Fred because 'City had made a bid'

Being fooled into giving Sanchez £500K p/w because 'City had made a bid'.

Being fooled into signing DvdB because 'Real Madrid had made a bid'.

Turning down £25m for Lingard then releasing him on a free 12-mnths later

Renewing Phil Jones' contract.

The DDG fax machine debacle

The "opponents will tremble when they see Bastian Schweinsteiger on the teamsheet" quote from Woodward.

Wout Weghorst

Joel Glazer comparing Anthony Martial to Pele.

 

[sebsheep]

Joel Glazer comparing Anthony Martial to Pele.

How did I not know about this?!

 

[Kellyiom]

I would stipulate the following as 5 regular occurring (annoying) features of our play for sometime now and that never seem to improve;

1/Attempts at playing out from the back (are becoming laughable)!
2/Constantly playing with wingers who always seem to want the ball 'to feet' (so they can cut in on the diagonal) and rarely if ever try to get to the bye line and cross!
3/Trying to take free kicks quickly in opponents final third/edge of their box, most of which seem to finish up with our keeper (only the player taking kick seems to know what he's attempting) or to set the opposition up for transition!
4/Never seeming to think about sending one of our players to stand on the bye-line at throw-ins in the opponents final third, even though it's not an offside position and therefore presents the opposition with a problem!
5/Our scoring rate from corner kicks is... abysmal !

100% right mate. I watch a lot of American football and it's obvious that everything they do is planned and therefore trained so I don't understand how these gaps seem to occur in our game. It would be just unthinkable that a quarterback would start play and not tell what he was going to do and just leave it to everyone to work out what they're doing.
The corner kicks thing has been annoying for a long time now and our lack of threat from free kicks is desperate as well, especially given our history of either scoring directly like Irwin or Beckham or making use of strong, physical players like Maguire could be just like Pallister and Bruce were.

And we're all wanting to see a winger cross the ball at last, not saying to completely drop the inverted winger concept if it's that important but it's not working anyway.

 

[Salt Bailly]

 

[sugar_kane]

So glad I found this as I was convinced I'd imagined it...

Fellaini was taken for his United medical in Phil Neville's boot

Mata on the other hand arrives at Carrington in a helicopter like he's Logan Roy.

Both within a few months of other. Welcome to Disneyland.