Well, it is difficult if you're not prepared to exchange actual money for them. Other clubs have grasped that principle.
United in this Summer transfer window
- Thread starter LawCharltonBest
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Well, it is difficult if you're not prepared to exchange actual money for them. Other clubs have grasped that principle.
That was always Fergies way, go for one player, if we don't get him that's tough.
But it's only central midfield where we seem to have run out of ideas. For other positions, it seems we always have options popping up that we see are right for us and that we go for. In central midfield, it seems barely any players are deemed as right for us.
Bidding £25m or £30m for Fab doesn't constitute 'going for him'.
We probably did....you know how we like to prepare a bid lol.
I recall Denis Irwin made a surprisingly strong comments in June that we would go for Fabregas, and we did as it was it was evident with 2 bids, albeit below the asking price, so therefore it would suggest thiago was our backup option hence no official bid from us to barca.
What a complete shambles. I predicted this would be the next step weeks ago, if the board/management cant find a single midfielder (we openly stated we need one) then serious questions need to be asked.
I just think we should have persevered with the Fabregas bid and ignored Thiago. You wonder if we had done that Barca might have sold him. Them selling Thiago gave them no option but to hold onto Fabregas. If we had got him first then they would have held onto Thiago.
I personally think there was no real foresight in our attempts to buy Fabregas, with Barca losing Thiago to Bayern we knew it would be less likely for them to sell Fabregas especially when we made a ridiculous bid for him.
Who knows why the Cesc bid really failed, was it due to the relatively smalls bids we made, poor planning or even the fact we don't really have the money or probably the likelihood is the ineptness from Edward Woodward....
So back to square one again. Moyes sounds a bit irritated judging from those quotes.
We were testing Fabregas' resolve more than anything. If Fabregas was keen to stay then we wouldn't have got him no matter what the offer. If he wanted to push for an exit, then I don't think a ridiculous offer would have been needed.
We should have tested barca's resolve too with a big bid. Testing fabregas' resolve is pointless because he's never going come out and say I want to go to Manchester United and completely ruin hid relationship with the club he loves and their fans.
There were so many conflicting reports it was difficult to fully understand the situation, on one side it was strongly reported that he wanted regular football as it was world cup year and that he preferred a move to United, and you need to remember Barca is Cesc's boyhood team and there was never any chance of him saying that he wanted to leave or force a transfer.
If he wanted to leave he would have said he wanted to leave. It's possible to let the club know you want to leave in a dignified and professional manner. It's simple enough.
It's also possible to get the club to sell by making a great offer.
He quite blatantly did not want to join us in the end, although I'm sure we tempted him somewhat.
Nah. I guess Fabregas secretly wanted to leave Barcelona to join us but was too afraid to say so, instead choosing to wait patiently and just hope that United offered a huge amount of money for him that Barcelona would accept even though he gave no indication to them of wanting to leave. Yeah. That doesn't sound at all ludicrous.
I'm leaving you gimps to it here. Utter feckwittery and I'm not even going to get dragged into this one.
Were you trying to quote me?
why am i not surprised?
disappointed but not surprised
disappointed but not surprised
If an offer is 3/4 of what something is worth, the owner is unlikely to sell. It's hardly rocket science.
After the first offer was announced I posted the following:
£26m is too low, and unlikely to tempt Barca. It sounds like us doing our usual due diligence routine, preparing for a long negotiation, determined not to pay a penny more than our 'valuation', which of course is sacrosanct, only for PSG to come in two days before the close of the window, and offer Barcelona the full asking price, and Fabregas to head for Ligue 1.
Why not make an offer that Barca might accept, and try to get it done?
It wasn't much of a prophecy, but, apart from PSG, it sadly turned out to be right. Maybe we could never have landed Fabregas, but we should at least have made a serious try.
Nobody can declare in a factual manner any hypothetical sub-plots to our bids for Fab. 'Testing the water' with Fab - £25m does not test anything.
Perhaps if we bid £45m, and his club considered it, it would have been a good context to test whether Cesc himself wanted to come, given that he would actually have a decision to make.
We can't just pose a question of 'would you rather play for Manchester United or Barcelona?' There is no contest there. However, the question changes when it becomes 'would you rather play for United who really want you, or stay at Barcelona who have just accepted a bid for you?'
Also, if this was some big exercise to guage Cesc's interest in coming, surely that information could have been obtained a lot more easily, probably well before the window opened too?
Perhaps if we bid £45m, and his club considered it, it would have been a good context to test whether Cesc himself wanted to come, given that he would actually have a decision to make.
We can't just pose a question of 'would you rather play for Manchester United or Barcelona?' There is no contest there. However, the question changes when it becomes 'would you rather play for United who really want you, or stay at Barcelona who have just accepted a bid for you?'
Also, if this was some big exercise to guage Cesc's interest in coming, surely that information could have been obtained a lot more easily, probably well before the window opened too?
What are people even annoyed about? Is everyone overlooking the part where he said "there is a need (to sign players)" and "if the right players are available then great"
It's like people would rather any signing than making sure we get the right signing. Of course there's a chance now that we won't sign anyone, there's only about 10 days left. Moyes has to be aware that something may not happen, as the fans must do as well. If nothing is imminent, do you expect him to come out and say "yeah, I promise we will definitely sign some players" and then risk going back on his word?
It's like people would rather any signing than making sure we get the right signing. Of course there's a chance now that we won't sign anyone, there's only about 10 days left. Moyes has to be aware that something may not happen, as the fans must do as well. If nothing is imminent, do you expect him to come out and say "yeah, I promise we will definitely sign some players" and then risk going back on his word?
I think we're all missing the point here. Since the first week of June when it hit about $15, our stock price has been climbing all summer. Regardless of transfer failings, our rivals strengthening and so forth. So the market is quite clearly telling Woodward that hey, we'll keep investing regardless, you just keep on signing those tire deals.
And in the end, that's what Ed is there for. Maximise value to the shareholders.
And in the end, that's what Ed is there for. Maximise value to the shareholders.
Its a worrying sign that Moyes is saying we need to strengthen and he wants to bring in new faces yet at the same time saying we cant get anybody. Its becoming clear that somebody has fecked up and it has to be Woodward. Remember that trip back from Oz for urgent transfer business? What was going on there?
Moyes seems to know what we need but has yet to do anything. It's like he's spilled some milk and is just standing there staring at it going "Yeah, I do need to clean that up..." and then 20 minutes pass and somebody asks him whether he's still going to do it and he repeats himself, this time a bit less convincingly, til he's asked a few more times and eventually decides to just let it soak into the carpet.
They will get feck all value if we are not doing the business on the pitch.
If we don't sign any cover for carrick than you have to say its a glaring issue. Fergie might have got away with it but there was surely no way the club weren't aware of it being an issue last season and at the start of the summer. An injury anywhere else on the pitch causes us a problem but there is the depth to not necessarily make it completely messing us up. There's no such depth for carricks role. Even if they had got fabregas it would have been an issue. I think the club not getting a big name signing is fair enough, but to not be able to bring in someone even if they're just a squad player seems very strange.
Let's not rewrite history here. We bid for both Thiago and Fabregas, two midfielders that would have massively improved us. We've also bid for Baines and Fellaini. It's not like Moyes is sitting at his desk still trying to figure out how to get an outside line.
Despite what he said this morning I'd be amazed if we don't end up buying a midfielder before the window closes. I'm less convinced about us getting Baines.
Despite what he said this morning I'd be amazed if we don't end up buying a midfielder before the window closes. I'm less convinced about us getting Baines.
Depends who they think are the right players, that excuse could be used every year from now on.
Yeah, I still think it's very likely we'll sign a midfielder, even if it's a blatant stop-gap.
Unfortunately that's just not true. As long as we qualify for the CL (and given the sh*t show at Arsenal, that still seems likely) financially it makes very little difference where we finish in the top 4. And what's the point of throwing capital at a project if it's not going to have a sizeable return?
If I were the Glazers that's how I would run United. Look at how much I have to invest to just keep them in the top 4. This season, the reigning champions - I probably don't need to invest much. I've got a bargain manager in who costs half of what Jose or Pep would have, I've got a settled team which still looks t be the 3rd best. That's great. Season tickets sold, sponsorship tour of asia complete and new deals already coming in. Fantastic.
And face it, they don't even like nor watch football.
Exactly, and they won't want fans attaching themselves to other clubs who are becoming successful. That can happen with kids who get disillusioned easily. When you support a team for a good number of years your love for that club is more deep rooted and you stick with them no matter what.
Well yeah, but if Moyes begins settling for players he doesn't really want in his first transfer window, he's not setting a great precedent. Moyes knows we need a midfielder, he said as much a long time ago.
They haven't run the club in that manner up until now, why would they start just because we've changed manager? If anything, they'll know improving the squad is more important now than it was previously, they won't be blind to the fact that SAF made players over-perform and that the new manager needs to be shown support in moving the club forward. They might not be football experts, but these issues will not be over their heads.
He did? As far as I was aware Thiago's father said we were interested in him but Thiago himself said that he didn't speak to us.
We can bid for 100 more players too if we keep going in at 70% of their market value and the outcome will be the same every time.
