Transfer Targets this Summer

charlenefan

Far less insightful than the other Charley
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
Messages
33,052
The last few summers I genuinely think Fergie's had a point with his lack of value in the market I mean take last summer and look at the potential targets specifically for midfield; Nasri, Sneijder maybe Modric? The list was pretty small. This summer though is surely going to be a different matter, when you look at the performances of Napoli in the Champions League, Bilbao against us surely there's no end of players who are available and would improve us dramtically. Below is just a list of players who have impressed me this season (I realise some are players some have been talking about for at least a year already)

Eriksen
Inler
Hamsik
Martinez
Herrera
Muniain
*Gotze
*Hazard
*Gaitan

*players who I haven't seen myself but there's been a lot of talk about

Surely the above haven't been lost on Fergie and we will be improving the squad this summer....
 
I don't think Eriksen, Inler or Götze are targets in reality. Götze is too big of a bite, Eriksen isn't a fit and Inler, there has been nothing that suggests that. I also don't think he's that good.
 
Martinez
Modric or a similar type player
Young/cheap striker to replace Berba.
 
I’d expect SAF business to be very heavily focused on defence too where we definitely require a top defender or 3 and with an eye out for a central midfielder if Modric or someone of that ilk becomes available.

As far as van Wolfswinkel is concerned, at eight figure price he isn't a good target but for a more reasonable fee is someone I'd see a strong possibility ( especially if Owen remains injury prone, Berbatov gets more splinters in his ass and Macheda remains inept with a suspect attitude).

We have a lot sub-standard dead wood to shift but I feel SAF will be uber-determined to make sure his twilight stage of his career doesnt end on whimper with our blue neighbours taking the plaudits and the silver pots too. I except some serious investment if targets are attainable.
 
Assessing the squad the most likely would be a right full, who is our right full, we don't have that nailed down. Rafael had a good spell, but he is injury prone and still card happy, Smalling (Centre Half), Jones (Centre Half), someone different there every game, it used to be just Gary Neville. Everywhere else is pretty solid. Perhaps midfield, will Fletcher return, will Pogba stay, does Scholes stay on another year? How does Fergie rate Petrucci and Tunnicliffe, enough not to sign somebody to block their progress through?
 
Lucas would be around the 20m mark. He wouldn't be a much bigger pay than Downing was. But he's very unproven. I'd be impressed if he went to Europe, especially England, and became a hit straight away.
 
Hamsik
Hazard
Tevares
(and get Pogba signed)
 
You need money to but players. Our recent transfer history kind of indicates that we don't have any, so I'm expecting another quite summer.
 
Garethw said:
You need money to but players. Our recent transfer history kind of indicates that we don't have any, so I'm expecting another quite summer.
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Yeah that's why we signed 3 players for 50-55m only last summer. Poor, skint us :(
 
KM said:
Yeah that's why we signed 3 players for 50-55m only last summer. Poor, skint us :(
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I don't think money is the problem, however we still didn't address the midfield problem we had. DeGea yes he was needed and has ended up a very pleasant surprise. Jones was far too inexperienced to make a difference in Europe and Young, good but yet another winger.
 
Break the bank?!

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finneh said:
It's wages that are restricting us as much as capital outlay.
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Well if we are giving Young more than 100k then I struggle to see Wages being a problem.
 
KM said:
Well if we are giving Young more than 100k then I struggle to see Wages being a problem.
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Exactly. You just have to look at the increase in the wage bill this year to know that the club are perfectly willing to offer very good wages. We have the fifth highest wage budget in Europe, a budget that absolutely dwarfs the team that outclassed us last night.

Maybe we need to think a bit more about the £70m that was spent on Hargreaves, Anderson and Berbatov and the return we've had on that investment (not to mention the wages that we've paid out to them during their time at the club).
 
GCHQ said:
Exactly. You just have to look at the increase in the wage bill this year to know that the club are perfectly willing to offer very good wages. We have the fifth highest wage budget in Europe, a budget that absolutely dwarfs the team that outclassed us last night.

Maybe we need to think a bit more about the £70m that was spent on Hargreaves, Anderson and Berbatov and the return we've had on that investment (not to mention the wages that we've paid out to them during their time at the club).
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All the top clubs sign expensive flops, bar none. It's part of competing at the highest level. Absurd to expect a manager to get every single big money signing right.

Worth stressing that Berbatov has made a hell of a lot more of a contribution than expensive "flops" at most other big clubs I could think of.
 
GCHQ said:
Exactly. You just have to look at the increase in the wage bill this year to know that the club are perfectly willing to offer very good wages. We have the fifth highest wage budget in Europe, a budget that absolutely dwarfs the team that outclassed us last night.

Maybe we need to think a bit more about the £70m that was spent on Hargreaves, Anderson and Berbatov and the return we've had on that investment (not to mention the wages that we've paid out to them during their time at the club).
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Why focus on the less productive transfers? To be fair, SAF and his team have done pretty well on very little net outlay over the last 5 years.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
All the top clubs sign expensive flops, bar none. It's part of competing at the highest level. Absurd to expect a manager to get every single big money signing right.

Worth stressing that Berbatov has made a hell of a lot more of a contribution than expensive "flops" at most other big clubs I could think of.
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Those three are our most expensive signings since we bought Rooney in 2004 and they've pretty much all been unmitigated disasters. Berbatov's contribution gets talked up by some but it's been a pretty spectacular failure given the money that was spent to buy him. I think the failure of those three, but the £30m spent on Berbatov in particular, is the reason why Fergie has been very wary of spending large amounts of money on one player in the last few years.

People wonder why the midfield is currently in pretty poor shape and then seem to forget that we spent £40m on Hargreaves and Anderson.
 
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