To be fair, he also doesn't make tackles, interceptions and win duels. Interestingly, his partner and replacement do all of that.
Either he is that good that strikers get scared from him and attack only his partner, or he is not as good as we think.
The beginning of the end... (the original board vetoed Mourinho's transfer wish list thread)
- Thread starter charlenefan
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Either he is that good that strikers get scared from him and attack only his partner, or he is not as good as we think.
If that's the case, then the argument he isn't being backed would stand up to scrutiny, even if it's obvious he's been backed in the past.
I agree he isn't being fully backed. I don't think the club trust him in the market given the poor outputs from the majority of his signings so far.
From what I see the veto has nothing to do with the list quality.
In (for the main squad):
Dalot
Fred
Out (from the main squad):
Blind
Carrick (retired)
As we can see, we hired two players that play in similar positions as the ones who left. I think the board is doing an good job in terms of squad engineering, but in terms of squad quality they are not.
The squad engineering should not be so "by the book" when you lack quality. Yes, bringing in some players would sacrifice others in the squad, but that's a gamble we should had taken.
In (for the main squad):
Dalot
Fred
Out (from the main squad):
Blind
Carrick (retired)
As we can see, we hired two players that play in similar positions as the ones who left. I think the board is doing an good job in terms of squad engineering, but in terms of squad quality they are not.
The squad engineering should not be so "by the book" when you lack quality. Yes, bringing in some players would sacrifice others in the squad, but that's a gamble we should had taken.
Don't blame them one bit, Mourinho would bankrupt the club and still want to buy another centerback.
I'm glad the board have enough common sense to not spend £70m on Willian or buy another Centerback for Mourinho when the squad's full of them already.
So we sign Boateng, Alderweireld or whoever, does this magically make the team play some decent football?
Maybe they've considered the transfer business from last summer and thought that Maguire for £15m would have been a better option than Lindelof at £35m.
Maybe even Woodward can now look at players like Sanchez, Pogba and Lukaku and can't understand how we play such crap football.
I'm glad the board have enough common sense to not spend £70m on Willian or buy another Centerback for Mourinho when the squad's full of them already.
So we sign Boateng, Alderweireld or whoever, does this magically make the team play some decent football?
Maybe they've considered the transfer business from last summer and thought that Maguire for £15m would have been a better option than Lindelof at £35m.
Maybe even Woodward can now look at players like Sanchez, Pogba and Lukaku and can't understand how we play such crap football.
He signed a new contract a few months ago, so he's got 3+ years left.
So next summer we can still sell him for £30m, so I don't understand your point here.
Also the same logic can be applied for Toby, surely? We can wait 6 months and get him for £25m total, so I still fail to see the need to pay £30m and get rid of a player for him now.
I'm not sure how much he's played in pre-season for Spurs, but I'd guess that him & Poch aren't likely to make up any time soon.
Pep doesn't work in the same type of framework which was my point. He is an head coach, he has a DOF and a CEO that knows him and do the job that we(United) expect from the manager. It's a different world.
If they don't trust him then why is he still here? I could understand a debate between Mourinho and the board over certain players but if it's gotten to the point of genuine distrust I'm baffled as to why he remains as our manager. And I say as someone who advocates keeping him on at the moment.
what?The club are only interested in making money and I think that's been obvious for a long while...but it does go hand in hand with being succesful on the pitch.
I don't have a problem if our policy is not to sign older players for inflated prices, either because we want to build a team long term, or want players to have re-sale value. The problem is this clearly hasn't been the strategy.
I also find the idea that this wouldn't be communicated to the manager at the point of discussing what players he wants, but would be communicated to the press after we don't sign the players he wants, difficult to believe. Just think for a second about how incredibly stupid that is. However badly anyone may already think the club is run, this would be a massive step further up the incompetency ladder.
It's no doubt a quality thing. But Ed has been thinking he's invested so much on the back line that the manager gets no more. Problem is, Jose has spent 60m on his centre backs across two players. Its very reasonable for him to ask for more investment rather than deal with LVG dead wood (hence selling Blind and trying to flog Rojo).
Liverpool spent more on one centre back. City spent 200m across their entire back 4. Chelsea re signed Luiz, Alonso and added Rudiger for more than what Jose spent. So noting all of these, I don't know why people are saying "but he bought 2 centre backs" as an argument. All the other managers have spent more than him in similar areas. He obviously feels like he needs to add to improve the quality and keep up.
It's not his fault Blind and Rojo are average players. Jones can't stay fit which leaves Smalling and Bailey, the latter of which was out for a good 2-3 months last season and needs to be treated cautiously.
The only mistake transfer I can see is Lindelof but he was probably worth a punt given his age and price.
Neither Bailly nor Lindelof were first choice last season, behind Jones. Thats who Mourinho turned to in the push for 2nd place.
Alarm bells have to be ringing when you spent large amounts on CBs and none of them are currently first choice, but now you have to pay £70 million for a 3rd try that may fail. And with Toby if he came in and failed we'd get nothing for him due to his age after just 1 season
I don't think the age is what we balked at, I think it's the quality. Sanchez at 29 is still one of the best LW in the world, and exchanging him in a straight deal for a player who it didn't quite work out for, was a good deal for both parties.
Toby at £65m in the final year of his contract is not good business no matter how you slice it.
Same applied for Willian.
So I dont think our policy has suddenly changed and we aren't open to buying older players, it's just that if we're going to go for someone who's older he needs to be of a certain standard, and available for a reasonable price.
This is getting ridiculous now.
Our CEO briefing press and getting his excuses about transfer window, our manager moaning to the press and getting his excuses for performances. How long can it last, I don't know, but it really feels like the beginning of the end as I wrote yesterday in other thread.
First spell of bad results and the pressure will be humungous, someone will have to go for sure.
Let's better hope for a good start of the season to clear the atmosphere a little.
Our CEO briefing press and getting his excuses about transfer window, our manager moaning to the press and getting his excuses for performances. How long can it last, I don't know, but it really feels like the beginning of the end as I wrote yesterday in other thread.
First spell of bad results and the pressure will be humungous, someone will have to go for sure.
Let's better hope for a good start of the season to clear the atmosphere a little.
It’s not a matter of backbone. He claims to be the best manager in the world so let him prove it. Us not getting a CB is no excuse for Mourinho to fail. He got us 2nd last year let him try and get us first. If he can’t we will give it to another manager to have a go.
He doesn’t trust Mourinho’s long term vision and good on him because if he fluffs his lines it will be Ed that has to pick up the pieces.
I don’t see nothing wrong in giving him a contract extension to. He was doing a good job and deserved his pay rise. We was smart enough to ensure it was a year incase of a scenario like this. All in all Woodward is doing a good job. Us fans are just the short sighted ones. But no surprise here as must of us know sweet f-all about football.
I mean...if he doesn't trust Mourinho's vision for the club, then giving him a contract extension quite clearly isn't a good idea? I get that the board are going to want to critique a manager and won't have absolute blind faith in him, but if they genuinely don't trust him to make signings then I'm baffled as to why he's still here.
Bailey was treated with caution because of his surgery. It was best to be stable and safe in those scenarios and Jones Smalling was working well at the time. I have little doubt we will see more of Bailey now if he stays fit.
Also alarm bells don't ring when Jose spent 61m and asks for more on defence, because 3 other clubs have spent considerably more in the same areas and he needs to keep up.
If we didn't sell Rojo for 30m this year, how might we sell him for the same price next year? He's a year older and will have close to zero minutes.
I disagree.
Jose arrived. He bought players. We won 2 trophies.
The next Summer, we bought more players. We got 2nd place.
This Summer, we needed one final surge of money, to push for 1st place....we didn't get it.
Year on year there is improvement, though I do agree the football style is boring and definitely needs work.
If Jose leaves and we end up with a "yes man", the board will be in charge of the footballing decisions and you can bet that any player which arrives, will be looked at purely from a financial perspective.
Ed was a disaster, these last 2 months. No sane individual would argue otherwise. Now the football begins and it's time for our manager and players to show their worth.
Let's start talking football.
When push comes to shove, I genuinely think the owners would see more value in keeping Woodward over José, which is messed up on so many different levels.
We would have been burnt more if He landed in city. I don't support the managers methods and tactics fully, and only have this stance regarding Toby and not Willian or Perisic but the board should also the aware of the situation the team is in. We really needed a player like him to have some chance to win major trophy.
Yet they were apparently fine with signing 32 year old Diego Godin. Go figure.
Because they invested the money once the prices started going up. £34 million for Bailly at the time was a lot, £31 million for Lindelof was a lot. There werent a lot of CBs that had been bought for more than that. If we were signing them from their former clubs today they would also be in the same boat as Maguire and Toby, costing us £60 million or more. Thats just the rapid inflation from the Neymar and VVD deals
Its not the boards job to provide alternatives, they sanction moves but like any business there has to be a justification to spending. If they see that we have 5 international level central defenders in the squad they might want solid evidence from our scouts that the players we bring in are a significant upgrade to what we already have.
As for timing - they were responding to all the negative stories from the manager and the press about the window being a shambles. The papers were full of them yesterday.
They do when their CBs work out for them and ours havent.
He hardly played minutes last season either. It's not like we'll suddenly sell him for a pittance, we'll still get minimum £25m for him because unlike Toby he's not in the final year of his contract so his value just isn't going to disappear.
And its Jose's fault about Baileys injury? Lindelof is the only player who I can say hasn't really worked out. But beating him with a stick for it and denying other defenders is silly.
This is basically what's happened. Knew he was in for a shitstain with the press and fans, so decided to throw Mourinho under the bus. I also want Mourinho gone but what Ed has done here is unacceptable.
definitely with the board on this one. Willian 70mill (2 more seasons at the top), Perisic (2 more seasons at the top) then we need 240 million to spend on new wide players. in addition to what we spend on them. Mixed feelings about Maguire. I am sure we have similar levels at the squad currently
What's the fecking point of a scouting system if all we aim to pick up are players that most on here could give a accurate description of.
Jose clearly isn't listening to any of them
Jose clearly isn't listening to any of them
We couldn't get 25m for him now.
So we probably won't get that much for him next year. Particularly given he be on lower wages if he moves which he will be reluctant to do. No club will pay a full fee and high wages for him to match what he's on.
Absolutely no need to respond to them immediately. If Woodward felt an absolutely burning desire to cover his arse (and I don't see why he couldn't take the moral high-ground and keep his trap shut, for the good of the club) then he could have waited until after our season opener or, ideally, the international break. Throwing the manager under the bus the evening before our season opener - with a badly under-cooked squad - is tantamount to sabotage. An unforgivable decision.
Yes but again, if this was the case, it would have been discussed with Mourinho, and different targets would have been identified. And that would have happened fairly early on in proceedings...and Jose wouldn't have been banging on about some list of names he handed over back at the end of May. So if you believe all this you are forced to believe that no one bothered to tell Mourinho at any point...the manager of the team, which simply isn't going to be the case because the mere idea of it is so fecking stupid.
We also have no evidence that Alderweireld would have been £65m as apparently, if you believe what's come out, we never made a bid, or even had a discussion with Tottenham about it. Yet somehow concluded he was too expensive.
If all of this was true the news from the club today would be Woodward being sacked
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It might be yes, since Jose constantly wants our players playing through injury and complains when Smalling and Jones have had to say no and get themselves fit. Then he has to rely on them when his "brave" player is injured all the time
Surely depends on the return you get from them? I'd argue we'd have been paying over the odds for both, but if either really made the difference throughout the season and won us the league you could argue going slightly over what was needed would then be justified.
It's the timing of this leak that pisses me off the most. A day before the league starts, after a turbulent summer, when we're faced with all the criticism in the world and everyone should be as united as possible... but no, someone needed to wash their hands and throw some more controversial fuel on the fire.
How do these people run a multi billion company? feck me.
How do these people run a multi billion company? feck me.
Fred and Dalot = £70m. Hardly peanuts. Why they didn't spend further has been briefed by the club. They don't think spending £60+ on 29 and 30 years old to be a good use of their money, and I'd agree with them.
What? So now we are assuming Jose got Bailey injured? Very bizzare.
Also Jones was the player who wanted to continue playing. Smalling was the one who wanted to stop.
Hated Jose buggers off. New manager which has us playing beautiful football od course. But he needs some players and Ed says that's not a good list, no better than you got deal with it.
Im still confused by all this. Wasnt our main problem last season that we didnt score/create enough goals. Defensively we were one of the best if not the best