I thought Fred was one of the players that had to be sold. Always thought it was one of Fred/McT and VDB.
Except we're not getting money for VDB, except a minimal loan fee at best. Hate to be reactive, but at this stage Brighton seem to have a better idea of how to identify suitable profiles for CM, so we would literally be just as well signing Baleba as Amrabat, just as we obviously should have paid Caicedo's various reps the cumulative 2-3m or whatever at the time, as people here suggested based upon what we already knew of the player for brief international appearances and the scouting reports emerging. Or possibly both, since Baleba seems more of a long term Cas replacement. Except that even this not especially imaginative take would require more coherence than our recruitment seems to follow. The best thing about new ownership is that the path of least resistance is just for them to hire a footballing consultant and any decent consultant who's followed the game over the last few years will see the trend of recruitment profiles, what's worked, how on a broader scale the PSG Galactico model hasn't worked and neither have manager-led recruitment models, and that there are a number of players with such little playing value that they need to be moved on, even if it ostensibly sets precedents for 'low selling'. The latter is a lesser evil.
Even if it incurs small on the books losses, we have to shift Maguire; Henderson can go for 12-15 if that's what it takes, which is still FFP profit - likewise McTominay. Prices are only as strong a your negotiating position, and once we have players who fit our profile, we don't have to sell them for less than large money, because the context shifts; likewise if we have 3-4 players with clearly identified, suitable profiles being pursued for each position, then you just provisionally line up each deal - which any recruitment arm should be able to delegate , even if it means hiring external negotiators to help with simultaneous negotiations - and pick the easiest one. You could pick 15-20 players across Europe who would have been better fits for a dynamic, robust, technically good, positionally smart number 8, who can press and counter-press and handle the ball in fairly tight areas and be coached up where needs be; there are probably a few at the requisite level in South America too, whereby you just screen for long-term value and visa .
Usually, if it looks a weird decision (a slight, at best midpaced player with little experience in shielding a line, playing with a positionally erratic no. 10 and an ageing single pivot screener with increasing issues getting up to speed physically against physicality, speed and a generally high baseline of interplay) then it's not mysteriously smart, just contrary. Common sense says Casemiro at this stage can't support Mount/Bruno double 8, the eye test says that Maguire doesn't have a place in a team that looks to play high and has little to no value therefore, it also says that Scott just doesn't show for the ball and is positionally well behind his peers at top 6 clubs . It takes a lot of myopia at various degrees of explanatory complexity to go around those decisions.
Unless we scrape through games until October and Mainoo comes in and (a) is an actual prodigy and (b) gets played, then it's just going to go the way people doubting ETH 's line on this fear it's going to go. And we'll just see more elaborate excuses, just as we saw with Oleball defenders, and people defending the recruitment system, and people saying fans are too hard on players (as has ben discussed previously, expectations placed on MU players by fans are minimal compared to those at other big clubs in Europe; Maguire would been in therapy after a couple of months at Madrid, and be trying to escape from Italy after a couple of months faced with the ultras (if he continued to make mistakes -the pace thing would be less of an issue admittedly in that league).