Transfers: Where do you stand?

As others have said, our scouting and negotiation teams need huge improvement. Our PR team too, to an extent.

It feels a lot like we're solely relying on EtH to come up with viable targets this summer, and while this is fine to an extent, it shows how poor our own scouting is. The fact that we're constantly preparing bids for months on end with no progress and seem only capable of doing this for one deal at a time is another issue, and the fact that we're regularly letting our club be seen as a joke with all this 'United are monitoring, wooing, preparing bids etc' just frustrates fans and makes the club look unprofessional.
 
A serious club with experienced people on top would have already discussed a player shortlist per position with the manager. Transfer negotiations would have started months ago that would make it impossible for the seller to understand if their player is the no 1 priority or just the back up. That would contribute in keeping their prices down and it would help the club to make the transfer process as smooth and as swift as possible.
 
We need to build a team that can challenge. That doesn’t take £80m or £120m player in each position. Those types of players are the players you sign once you have a team that’s playing great football, plays the coaches style, and challenges. Then you supplement with the “whatever the cost” players if they are the ones will take you over the final hurdle.

That said if ETH, identifies a CDM in Germany /France/Holland etc and asking price is £36m and fluff it because our scouts think he’s only worth £27m then we’ll never get anywhere.
 
It's obvious we didn't expect such a chance as FDJ to present itself, hence the hold up. He's just too good to move on to other targets, and the manager made him his priority. When the situation resolves one way or another we will know what other positions we can afford to strengthen and how, it really seems pretty straight forward to me. I think once we do get FDJ we will make 2 more signings quickly. And then we will try and get a 4th, but it might take some time because we have to sell some of our deadwood. The selling is the most disappointing at the moment. We really need to move Henderson, AWB, probably Bailly, Martial, Williams, as well and raise £50M - £80M.
 
Forget about signings, I am more pissed that we haven’t sold a single deadwood
 
Depends on our budget.

If we need to make big changes with limited budget, I’d stay away from big signings, and focus on “money ball” type low profile signings instead.

Ideally each signings should not be more than 15-25m. They don’t have to be best available, but they have to be right type of players for our system.

Approach 1 - 1x 100m+ signings
Approach 2 - 2x 60m+ signings
Approach 3 - 3x 40m+ signings
Approach 4 - 5x 25m+ signings

In my opinion we should go for “approach 4” for this summer.
 
5 days into the transfer window and nobody signed or sold:

kermit-panic.gif
 
We've been in this long enough to know how this summer is gonna play out, so just skip the disappointment and wait for the season to kick off.
 
Forgive my pessimism but I think we are heading for a disaster class of a window. Every signing we are linked with is tainted with some BS excuse lined up by the club. We are in deep trouble.
 
I don't understand why we are so annoyingly slow in the transfer market.
 
It's a concern that other clubs seem to be able to act decisively in the transfer market whilst United (at least) appear to dither.

You can point to City with Haaland and Liverpool with Nunez, the latter of which I suspect was well down the line for months, although perhaps it's easier with the big players.

Spurs are a good example at the moment. Appointed Conte, did great business in January and are quietly getting on with it now (Bissouma for £25 million today, apparently), improving their squad.

I do think the press obsession with United sees a lot of nonsense coming out about potential targets, but I do hope they are well down the line with a number of deals at this stage.
 
Our biggest issue has come from the fact we just throw massive money at players that aren’t actually worth it.. big names, star signings. Huge contracts so that if you want to sell them nobody can afford them. Just general bad business.

we need to be a little more smart than that.. build a good core base of players that don’t cost the Earth.. and then add the finesse .. the expensive signings. You don’t need a team Full of 80million pound signings, you only need a few of them if they are the best in class.
 
trevor newnham said:
I can't see why we are not going after Bellingham.
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Posts like this is why we are where we are.

Fans expecting us to sign a player valued at £120m with no CL, no squad.

We are in no position to sign Bellingham.
 
I don't care who, why, when. what or how, I just expect that if United are serious and fully backing Ten Hag, he will have his targets in the door before the season starts, preferably pre-season. That's all I'm asking/expecting.
 
charlenefan said:
Pay whatever it takes to get who the club wants even if it means paying over the odds

or

Refuse to dragged into bidding wars or paying over the odds and happy to walk away and move onto more affordable targets

I mean it's not our money either way but what stance would you prefer the club take?
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If you build a solid squad(mix of youth and proven talent) using B, then there will never be any need for doing A at all.

Once you get a solid squad, every year you can shortlist next transfer targets effectively and start negotiations much earlier and there will never be a need for the A approach. Look at how cleanly City got Haaland, they could have ended up getting into a bidding war with Real Madrid(lucky for City they got distracted by Mbappe), no constant transfer news, no rumours about price tag, player willingness leaked to the press. They could do that because they weren't desperate for a striker. They won the title and reached CL semis without a striker. Look at how we are dragging and dragging for De Jong. It's because we have no other option.
 
sadly due to no CL and turbulent year of clear unrest and division in the squad we are no longer overly attractive to the worlds elite.
Build a squad of quality hungry young players, get back in the top 4 maybe win a trophy and then add some cream on top later.
 
charlenefan said:
Pay whatever it takes to get who the club wants even if it means paying over the odds

or

Refuse to dragged into bidding wars or paying over the odds and happy to walk away and move onto more affordable targets

I mean it's not our money either way but what stance would you prefer the club take?
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Very easy to answer: the latter. The former is one of the driving factors behind the misery surrounding the club right now.
 
Personally, I'm not convinced that we'll even attempt to bring any more than 3 players in and that includes De Jong, and I am also not convinced that we'll get rid of more than 3 either.
I can't see Jones going at all, Bissaka & Bailly maybe, but if they do, I think we'll be looking for a versatile squad player, such as Timber perhaps, but not a first team starter.

Certainly no one in MF to leave as we've already parted ways with 3 out of contract, and in attack, Martial?
Again, I'm really not sure if we can offload him, and perhaps Ten Hag will think that he can get better performances from him.

Through all the chatter, I keep hearing the comment "This squad finished 2nd"
Also that the likes of Pellistri and Pereira to be given a chance..?!

It all sounds to me that Ten Hag has been told to "do better with what you already have here"
I would be surprised if Maguire, Shaw, McT, Bruno, Ronaldo, Sancho & Rashford etc are not in our starting XI on opening day, and I think that we are probably only likely to have one or maybe two new starters being De Jong and an RB.
 
RedRover said:
It's a concern that other clubs seem to be able to act decisively in the transfer market whilst United (at least) appear to dither.

You can point to City with Haaland and Liverpool with Nunez, the latter of which I suspect was well down the line for months, although perhaps it's easier with the big players.

Spurs are a good example at the moment. Appointed Conte, did great business in January and are quietly getting on with it now (Bissouma for £25 million today, apparently), improving their squad.

I do think the press obsession with United sees a lot of nonsense coming out about potential targets, but I do hope they are well down the line with a number of deals at this stage.
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I’m surprised Bissouma went for that fee, and I think he’d have improved your midfield, though not by a huge amount. I think Utd are hamstrung by the fact that every club, every player, every agent, knows without doubt that you *potentially* have the financial firepower to pay the absolute peak of wages, transfer fees etc. And it’s a very difficult situation to get out of. A player joining Spurs knows he won’t get more than 150k a week (unless he’s a young Harry Kane), but a player joining Utd will look at the players on 200- 300k PLUS per week, and feel that they can legitimately ask for parity. I’ve no idea how that problem can be resolved, but I think it’s really key. If only Spurs had been interested in Varane for example, there’s no way he’d have even considered asking for 340k a week. Players and agents make hay while the sun shines, so to speak, and signing for Utd is probably seen as peak harvest season.
 
Precedents have been set so it's difficult to negotiate. It's also easy to trick yourself into thinking this next huge fee signing will be it, we've had Maguire and Sancho and could easily have not signed them and been no different, although I do think Sancho can be very good for us in the future.

I'd really like to get ETH his targets like De Jong, he's probably the first current top manager we've had so to not back him would be a crime but we've spent over a billion with very little gained and back to square one. I'm tempted to say we should learn to walk again before running and get the top targets later on once we're more proven.

This we were second place is very misleading and I doubt ETH really believes it and is more just coming in with positivity for the players. It was 74 points while Lampard was tanking Chelsea and Liverpool we're missing a defence, no fecking surprise they're back to 90+ points just missing out. Under normal circumstances we'd be fourth or a weak third and our whole last 9 years we've not established ourselves as consistent top 4 even so we should really build up to that.

Even for average players the fee will jump up if it's Money bags United so it's going to be very difficult either way.
 
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Starting to believe no lessons have been learned in our transfer strategy.

I understand us being a big club and how that affects things but deals are still taking for to long to progress. Completion is another thing but having agreed principle deals are still taking way too long when you consider how public our deals are.

Barca with no money already have about 4 deals agreed in principle.
 
Pay whatever it takes to get the right players who want to play for Man Utd. By this I mean pay the transfer fees necessary to prise them from their clubs. If a player wants a massive massive wage I am very wary of why they are coming to the club though - pay big transfer fees, but not big agent fees, and do not pay ridiculous wages to get a player through the door.
 
It seems the same happens every summers, we have this 1 signing that we focus our attention to convince said player that we have to hold up any other signings. Is it really hard to project your budget with the fees, wages and most of the details in contract with FDJ and try to work on other signings. I mean we know the estimated fees and suchs and could have those put aside or cant we do that.

One more thing is i think it looks like we dont really have very very top persons regarding transfer connection/relationships (i mean not in business sense but more of personal thing as i think in the football world its more personal rather than strict business) over the years with our ever changing managers and teams.

Its not really about the time that only 5 days has been into transfer window. Its always about the impression that we never have certain list of targets that we really want and back up on when we couldnt land our target. It always keep trying and trying and at the end we panic buy or wait till next summer and then the football is bad and well in trouble again next summer.
 
MUFC OK said:
Forgive my pessimism but I think we are heading for a disaster class of a window. Every signing we are linked with is tainted with some BS excuse lined up by the club. We are in deep trouble.
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Thats the spirit
 
This from David Arnold via MEN

United's approach this summer is a patient one, with the club eager to ensure they don't rush into deals, overpay for players, or sign someone without doing the appropriate background checks to ensure they have the right personality to be a success under Erik ten Hag.

This is a reason why so many clubs have a DOF.

It's irrelevant who the manager is, the club should have identified suitable players at least 6 months ago that fit Manchester United.

Yes Hag is important in this whole new start and setup, however, the last 10+ years of recruitment at United has been pathetic and all based around the manager of the hour and Woodwards Ego.

The club, whilst seemingly trying to do things allegedly different, do not deserve any time or patience from supporters.

We come across as a very amateur football club.

It seems that all our signings are to be based on whomever Tag can convince to come to us.

So if we had of signed Poch, none of these players would be talked about etc

It's just mental how bad our scouting and general transfer strategy is.
 
choccy77 said:
This from David Arnold via MEN

United's approach this summer is a patient one, with the club eager to ensure they don't rush into deals, overpay for players, or sign someone without doing the appropriate background checks to ensure they have the right personality to be a success under Erik ten Hag.

This is a reason why so many clubs have a DOF.

It's irrelevant who the manager is, the club should have identified suitable players at least 6 months ago that fit Manchester United.

Yes Hag is important in this whole new start and setup, however, the last 10+ years of recruitment at United has been pathetic and all based around the manager of the hour and Woodwards Ego.

The club, whilst seemingly trying to do things allegedly different, do not deserve any time or patience from supporters.

We come across as a very amateur football club.

It seems that all our signings are to be based on whomever Tag can convince to come to us.

So if we had of signed Poch, none of these players would be talked about etc

It's just mental how bad our scouting and general transfer strategy is.
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Agreed.
 
Players like Pereira and Jones are still here too. Things like these piss me even more off than no incoming tansfer. We seem incapable of shifting our deadwood out unless they run their contracts down.
 
choccy77 said:
This from David Arnold via MEN

United's approach this summer is a patient one, with the club eager to ensure they don't rush into deals, overpay for players, or sign someone without doing the appropriate background checks to ensure they have the right personality to be a success under Erik ten Hag.

This is a reason why so many clubs have a DOF.

It's irrelevant who the manager is, the club should have identified suitable players at least 6 months ago that fit Manchester United.

Yes Hag is important in this whole new start and setup, however, the last 10+ years of recruitment at United has been pathetic and all based around the manager of the hour and Woodwards Ego.

The club, whilst seemingly trying to do things allegedly different, do not deserve any time or patience from supporters.

We come across as a very amateur football club.

It seems that all our signings are to be based on whomever Tag can convince to come to us.

So if we had of signed Poch, none of these players would be talked about etc

It's just mental how bad our scouting and general transfer strategy is.
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Agreed. A bit naive that people thought anything would change just because some people inside the club changed positions.
 
Godfather said:
Players like Pereira and Jones are still here too. Things like these piss me even more off than no incoming tansfer. We seem incapable of shifting our deadwood out unless they run their contracts down.
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To be fair, Chelsea have been guilty of it also, however, that doesn't stop them from upgrading failing positions. I do not remember a time where the Chelsea board have come out publicly and said that in order to bring in, they must sell.
 
NicolaSacco said:
I’m surprised Bissouma went for that fee, and I think he’d have improved your midfield, though not by a huge amount. I think Utd are hamstrung by the fact that every club, every player, every agent, knows without doubt that you *potentially* have the financial firepower to pay the absolute peak of wages, transfer fees etc. And it’s a very difficult situation to get out of. A player joining Spurs knows he won’t get more than 150k a week (unless he’s a young Harry Kane), but a player joining Utd will look at the players on 200- 300k PLUS per week, and feel that they can legitimately ask for parity. I’ve no idea how that problem can be resolved, but I think it’s really key. If only Spurs had been interested in Varane for example, there’s no way he’d have even considered asking for 340k a week. Players and agents make hay while the sun shines, so to speak, and signing for Utd is probably seen as peak harvest season.
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The way to resolve it is to go a season or maybe even two without paying. This year we should just get rid of us many high-priced underperforming players as we can. Go into next season with a trimmed down squad supplemented by youth. Nobody plays unless they are giving maximum effort. The results likely won't be great but if you're getting the effort the fans will still be able to support the team. We're right to let some of the over-priced players walk on a free this year. Do the same with De Gea and Ronaldo next year. Re-set the wage and transfer scale and stick to it. It might take a year or two for others to understand that this time we mean it. But, it's the only way we'll get back to paying normal fees and wages so that when we make a mistake we can sell the player on.
 
Utuhu said:
I don't understand why we are so annoyingly slow in the transfer market.
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If you can save 10 million euro, you do that.

Doing transfers when the fee is accepted immediately by selling club or its a release clause is fast. Everything else is not.

For example Barca wants a lot of money for FDJ. There is money to be saved here by not being impatient.
 
I am going to remain calm . Yes we need to bring players in but i dont doubt that there is work going on in the background. Trust the process i suppose is the best thing to say
 
romufc said:
Posts like this is why we are where we are.

Fans expecting us to sign a player valued at £120m with no CL, no squad.

We are in no position to sign Bellingham.
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Sorry if I gave that impression. I should have realised that he would be worth that much. Asinine post, forgive me
 
The problem is, people will compare us with City and Liverpool. But of course they are going to look more decisive in the transfer market. They are the best teams on the planet, and everyone who's gone there has ended up having a successful career. Not exactly a hard sell, is it?

Us on the other hand is a lot harder. Awful season, unhappy players..... Yes new manager, but convincing other players is a lot lot harder. If ETH does well this year, better players will want to come.
 
Someone can correct me if I'm just doing a bs take here but I think floating the club publically has hugely impacted how we handle transfer business (Woodward's disneyland comments, we can buy anyone, there's huge money there etc that have all proven to end up hurting us doing actual deals but have probably helped share price)
 
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