United in this Summer transfer window

Thiago has professional agents (including Pep's brother) and, separately from that, an unofficial adviser (his old man who looks out for him).

We sounded out the old man in a non-formal setting to see if there was any chance of his boy wanting to move. His dad said "no, we want to go to Munich", so we didn't pursue the matter further. That's why Thiago said that we didn't as far as speaking to any of his professional representatives - we knew that it would be futile.

I think the confusion here is with the distinct roles that Mazinho and Pere Guardiola have. Only one of them co-signs the contracts.
 
Beachryan said:
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.
Click to expand...


I agree with you. The Glazers will be happy as long United stay competitive and and finish top 4. Full stop.
 
certainly been an odd summer.

From the grandstanding big talk of we'd pay huge money,to there is no budget, to the very public Fabregas talk, to scrabbling around at the last minute begging Everton for Fellaini and Baines.
 
Sunny Jim said:
I agree with you. The Glazers will be happy as long United stay competitive and and finish top 4. Full stop.
Click to expand...


Bullshit. You dont get the kind of commercial revenue and brand name we do by just competing for the 4th spot. Even if Glazers are in it just for the money, our success on the pitch is why we get that kind of money out of our name. Turn into another Arsenal and it wont take long to disappear.
 
re glazers. Imo they desperately need a marquee signing, especially if Rooney leaves.
 
Van Piorsing said:
I don't think, they even know what the 'marquee signing' is at all.
Click to expand...



Blaiming the Glazers for the failure of buying players are wrong, Moyes is the responsible for getting any new signings which for some reason and so far we didn't get any. In the past we really didn't need to buy players to be competitive but times changed and we have City, Chelsea and maybe Spurs stronger than ever.
 
barros said:
Blaiming the Glazers for the failure of buying players are wrong, Moyes is the responsible for getting any new signings which for some reason and so far we didn't get any. In the past we really didn't need to buy players to be competitive but times changed and we have City, Chelsea and maybe Spurs stronger than ever.
Click to expand...

Why? How do we know they're not sitting there telling Moyes and Woodward that they won't go beyond x amounts for players and what not?
 
barros said:
Blaiming the Glazers for the failure of buying players are wrong, Moyes is the responsible for getting any new signings which for some reason and so far we didn't get any. In the past we really didn't need to buy players to be competitive but times changed and we have City, Chelsea and maybe Spurs stronger than ever.
Click to expand...

I'm not blaming Glazers for transfers, especially when transfer window is still open.

I think we even have a bit stronger team than season ago when United was 11 points clear at the very end of the season and I think City and Chelsea are aware of that, that's why they need to sign players.

All we need this summer is one player. One. Other than that, other deals will be a probably a depth additions.

I agree on Spurs. Sir Alex used to say about City, if the club will constantly sign players, they may eventually even win something.
 
Van Piorsing said:
I don't think, they even know what the 'marquee signing' is at all.
Click to expand...

I m sure they know what a marquee player is. They know nothing about football of course, but I m sure they have someone informing them about players that sell shirts
 
dev1l said:
I m sure they know what a marquee player is. They know nothing about football of course, but I m sure they have someone informing them about players that sell shirts
Click to expand...

I silently hope, they're supporting the new manager and will give him as much funds as he needs. That's pretty much all.

In other departments, as You say, it looks peachy. The club is absolute global Juggernaut, devouring sponsor deal after deal, opening new commercial establishments, all over the world... The club is more than marquee, though. Football was and is the real engine and I hope they know that.
 
Cina said:
Chevrolet are pretty fecking marquee, one of the biggest car companies in the world.
Click to expand...

Chevrolets cars in the UK are the biggest bags of shit going. Its not a brand I particularly like the club being associated with. I'd rather have a Dacia.
 
We are on the edge of having a genuinely world class team capable of beating the very best. But there are only a few players who will help us reach that stage of this teams evolution. And those players are very hard to sign.

Out task is made even more difficult because we have a new senior management team who front the club. Those very few players who could elevate us are maybe unsure about David Moyes or our new CEO does not yet have the slick gravitas to force the deals through.

We all knew the huge task the club faced in replacing SAF and Gill. SAF's influence was felt in every corner of the club which is now a pure manifestation of his vision. That task includes the ability to sign new players. To be honest, the fact that the club has stopped an exodus of players is a huge achievement.

I doubt SAF would have been able to convince Thiago or Fabregas. And Im sure there will be some squad strengthening activity that happens before the window closes.
 
David Moyes, Wayne Rooney and the importance of power

By Andi Thomas @Twisted_Blood on Aug 23 2013, 11:24a 1
176701481.0_standard_709.0.jpg

Michael Steele​
STAY CONNECTED
Manchester United have been adamant that Wayne Rooney will not be allowed to join Chelsea. Does this indicate a new insecurity at Old Trafford?
Transfers are about more than they seem. They're not just about (usually stupid) amounts of cash nor are they about (actually quite decent, most of the time) footballers. They're not even always about (exploitative, overcharged, unattractive, sponsor-laden) replica shirts. They're almost always about power, though: power assumed, power asserted and power exercised.
Most of the time this isn't particularly controversial or interesting. A player moves from a club that got relegated to a club that didn't: the power imbalance between the two clubs is obvious and so barely worthy of comment. Nor is it always the determining factor because sometimes a club simply decides to move a disappointment on or a new manager decides to refresh things or a player decides to return to his home club or country. But at the loud, top end of football, where the beasts are big and the money is bigger, power is crucial
​
Take Wayne Rooney. Except you can't, because he's absolutely, definitively, completely, totally, wholly and entirely not for sale. Well, not if you're Chelsea, anyway. Daniel Taylor's recent
exclusive in the Guardian was remarkable not only in its surety -- saying anything quite so certainly certain about the transfer market is unusual -- but in what it revealed about Manchester United's
thinking and the changed reality in which they find themselves.
​
It's not particularly surprising that United might want to keep Rooney: watching him play can at times be like watching a small child with a headache try to peel a banana, but he remains an effective player and his presence strengthens the squad. It isn't a revelation, either, that the Glazers were "bemused" by the offers received -- first £23m, then £25m -- both bids being almost hilariously low even for an apparently unsettled player. (Though "bemused" certainly suggests that however not for sale Rooney is, that there could be offers that would not be bemusing, and so he has a price.)
What's interesting is the revelation that it's not only the price and the desire to retain the player that's informing United's thinking. That would usually be enough, after all, but Taylor's piece specifically cites one further line of thinking.
Chelsea's £50m signing of Fernando Torres from Liverpool was widely seen throughout the game as a shift in dynamic between the two clubs. United are adamant they will not put themselves in the same position.​
While Torres's Chelsea career hasn't quite been an endless flood of blond-tinted goals, in hindsight the move -- "Liverpool have more history, Chelsea have more options" -- was of massive significance. Here was a club that had gone from contesting Chelsea in the Champions League semi-finals to selling them their best player. That they subsequently wasted the money didn't help, of course, but it wasn't a good look regardless of the way it's sliced.
The look is important. Power comes not just from what is, but from what is perceived. There are perhaps three managers in world football who could sell Wayne Rooney to a domestic rival and not look a bit diminished in the doing: the retiring Alex Ferguson; the Bayern-ing Pep Guardiola: and the most obvious and notable alternative to David Moyesfor the United position, the Chelsea-ing Jose Mourinho. That it's Mourinho who is trying to buy Rooney, and that United could well finish beneath the Londoners this season, only adds to the pressure. If Rooney joins Chelsea, he'll score goals; if United finish beneath Chelsea thanks to those goals, United will have effectively committed narrative suicide.
All of which goes to illustrate what a remarkable act of self-sabotage United committed by appointing David Moyes. This is not to say that Moyes is a bad manager (he isn't) or to state definitively that he isn't good enough to manage United to the standards that the club expects (he might be, though it seems perhaps more unlikely than likely). It's to point out that in moving from Ferguson to Moyes, Manchester United have significantly narrowed their ability to operate.
Where Ferguson (and David Gill) could buy and not-buy basically whoever they wanted, bad or good, weird or sensible, without copping too much flak -- hey, Bebe -- Moyes has to buy from the very top shelf. (He just hasn't earned it yet, Bebe.) Ferguson buys Fellaini and Baines? Highly sensible. Moyes buys Fellaini and Baines? What a terrible lack of imagination from the new man. Ferguson sells Rooney to Chelsea? The big man wins again. Moyes sells Rooney to Chelsea? Rats, ships, sinking, and so forth.
Does any of this matter? Even without Rooney, Moyes would still have a squad composed of multiple title-winners, including the best striker and the maybe-best goalkeeper in the league (and excellence in those positions can cover a multitude of midfield sins). Results are results, after all, and if Moyes wins three trebles in a row he'll quickly find himself at the pinnacle of the footballing world. In opting for somebody like Moyes over somebody like Mourinho, United have at least ensured that whatever happens on and off the pitch, a destabilizing civil war is unlikely.

It may also be relevant at a boardroom level. United's financial model is built on the accretion of regionalized sponsorship deals with a vast and exhausting list of peculiar companies, most recently Apollo Tyres ("official tyre partner in UK and India"). The house that Ferguson built is the house in which the Glazers are selling wall-space, and the idea of trying to tout a club that's just sold one of their best (or at least most high-profile) players is not the kind of thing that gets wallets opening. Mister Potato's attachment to Rooney is not purely sentimental.But if United are worried that selling Rooney to Chelsea would make them look like Liverpool, then United are worried. After all, part of what set Liverpool on the path from where they were to where they are was a magnificently wrong-headed managerial appointment: either Roy Hodgson or Graeme Souness, depending on how long a perspective you feel like taking. Auras are delicate things, easily damaged and difficult to repair, and they affect everything: from the morale of opponents to the interest of transfer targets, from the mood of the crowd to the tills at the megastore.
Mourinho has told the British media that, for ethical reasons, he couldn't possibly countenance another bid for Rooney before Monday's game between the two clubs. The media -- having taken a moment to still their beating hearts, loosen their collars and cross their legs uncomfortably -- have concluded that this means a bid will definitely come afterwards.
This, in conjunction with Chelsea's apparent hijacking of Tottenham's move for Willian, has breathed new life into one of the summer's most unusual rumours: the initially-baffling-but-curiously-unflushable Rooney-for-Mata part-exchange-plus-maybe-some-cash hyphen-fest. From a United point of view, one way of ameliorating the loss of reputation that would follow Rooney out of the door is by exchanging him for an arguably better, certainly outstanding, and perhaps more necessary opponent ... It would equalize the power-balance.
From a Chelsea point of view, God knows (our own Callum Hamilton knows as well) that Juan Mata's really very good indeed, and has a superior beard. But this in itself is a neat illustration of how power, reputation and status all work. Mourinho could definitely get away with selling him, because he's Mourinho. Imagine if Rafa Benitez had tried it. Stamford Bridge would be ashes.
 
Not signing a star is fine though, I'm happy to wait on that until the right one can be found as long as Rooney isn't going. As I've said before though, not being able to bring in a squad player is what is baffling. Fabregas wouldn't have solved the reliance on Carrick in the middle in terms of his defensive work, so either that's just an issue being completely over looked or they really think Jones is the cover there. That's the only thing I can think off.
 
Ash_G said:
Not signing a star is fine though, I'm happy to wait on that until the right one can be found as long as Rooney isn't going. As I've said before though, not being able to bring in a squad player is what is baffling. Fabregas wouldn't have solved the reliance on Carrick in the middle in terms of his defensive work, so either that's just an issue being completely over looked or they really think Jones is the cover there. That's the only thing I can think off.
Click to expand...

Or United have come to personal agreement with Fellaini and all we know is one or two public statements, whilst underneath the surface the two clubs know it will happen but are working furiously to get the best financial deal for themselves that they can.
 
711 said:
Or United have come to personal agreement with Fellaini and all we know is one or two public statements, whilst underneath the surface the two clubs know it will happen but are working furiously to get the best financial deal for themselves that they can.
Click to expand...

That's fine if it happens, I was placing fellaini in the big name signing just because at around 20m give or take that's a fair bit for us. As I said I don't mind not getting in a star player but if we don't get even someone who can just have a squad role to cover carrick that would be a mistake. We got lucky in the last 2 years with carricks fitness.
 
Cina said:
Why? How do we know they're not sitting there telling Moyes and Woodward that they won't go beyond x amounts for players and what not?
Click to expand...


This is silly. Blind hatred should not override ignorance.

They had approved Fergie buying an oldish Berba at 30million. What would they restrict Woody/Moyes? They are business people... do you think they know the exact value of each player thats on our hit-list? They would look at things at a strategic level only.
 
sglowrider said:
This is silly. Blind hatred should not override ignorance.

They had approved Fergie buying an oldish Berba at 30million. What would they restrict Woody/Moyes? They are business people... do you think they know the exact value of each player thats on our hit-list? They would look at things at a strategic level only.
Click to expand...

Maybe Gil and Fergie were more trusted/ convincing in their demands.
 
sammsky1 said:
David Moyes, Wayne Rooney and the importance of power

By Andi Thomas @Twisted_Blood on Aug 23 2013, 11:24a 1
176701481.0_standard_709.0.jpg

Michael Steele​
STAY CONNECTED
Manchester United have been adamant that Wayne Rooney will not be allowed to join Chelsea. Does this indicate a new insecurity at Old Trafford?
Transfers are about more than they seem. They're not just about (usually stupid) amounts of cash nor are they about (actually quite decent, most of the time) footballers. They're not even always about (exploitative, overcharged, unattractive, sponsor-laden) replica shirts. They're almost always about power, though: power assumed, power asserted and power exercised.
Most of the time this isn't particularly controversial or interesting. A player moves from a club that got relegated to a club that didn't: the power imbalance between the two clubs is obvious and so barely worthy of comment. Nor is it always the determining factor because sometimes a club simply decides to move a disappointment on or a new manager decides to refresh things or a player decides to return to his home club or country. But at the loud, top end of football, where the beasts are big and the money is bigger, power is crucial
​
Take Wayne Rooney. Except you can't, because he's absolutely, definitively, completely, totally, wholly and entirely not for sale. Well, not if you're Chelsea, anyway. Daniel Taylor's recent
exclusive in the Guardian was remarkable not only in its surety -- saying anything quite so certainly certain about the transfer market is unusual -- but in what it revealed about Manchester United's
thinking and the changed reality in which they find themselves.
​
It's not particularly surprising that United might want to keep Rooney: watching him play can at times be like watching a small child with a headache try to peel a banana, but he remains an effective player and his presence strengthens the squad. It isn't a revelation, either, that the Glazers were "bemused" by the offers received -- first £23m, then £25m -- both bids being almost hilariously low even for an apparently unsettled player. (Though "bemused" certainly suggests that however not for sale Rooney is, that there could be offers that would not be bemusing, and so he has a price.)
What's interesting is the revelation that it's not only the price and the desire to retain the player that's informing United's thinking. That would usually be enough, after all, but Taylor's piece specifically cites one further line of thinking.
Chelsea's £50m signing of Fernando Torres from Liverpool was widely seen throughout the game as a shift in dynamic between the two clubs. United are adamant they will not put themselves in the same position.​
While Torres's Chelsea career hasn't quite been an endless flood of blond-tinted goals, in hindsight the move -- "Liverpool have more history, Chelsea have more options" -- was of massive significance. Here was a club that had gone from contesting Chelsea in the Champions League semi-finals to selling them their best player. That they subsequently wasted the money didn't help, of course, but it wasn't a good look regardless of the way it's sliced.
The look is important. Power comes not just from what is, but from what is perceived. There are perhaps three managers in world football who could sell Wayne Rooney to a domestic rival and not look a bit diminished in the doing: the retiring Alex Ferguson; the Bayern-ing Pep Guardiola: and the most obvious and notable alternative to David Moyesfor the United position, the Chelsea-ing Jose Mourinho. That it's Mourinho who is trying to buy Rooney, and that United could well finish beneath the Londoners this season, only adds to the pressure. If Rooney joins Chelsea, he'll score goals; if United finish beneath Chelsea thanks to those goals, United will have effectively committed narrative suicide.
All of which goes to illustrate what a remarkable act of self-sabotage United committed by appointing David Moyes. This is not to say that Moyes is a bad manager (he isn't) or to state definitively that he isn't good enough to manage United to the standards that the club expects (he might be, though it seems perhaps more unlikely than likely). It's to point out that in moving from Ferguson to Moyes, Manchester United have significantly narrowed their ability to operate.
Where Ferguson (and David Gill) could buy and not-buy basically whoever they wanted, bad or good, weird or sensible, without copping too much flak -- hey, Bebe -- Moyes has to buy from the very top shelf. (He just hasn't earned it yet, Bebe.) Ferguson buys Fellaini and Baines? Highly sensible. Moyes buys Fellaini and Baines? What a terrible lack of imagination from the new man. Ferguson sells Rooney to Chelsea? The big man wins again. Moyes sells Rooney to Chelsea? Rats, ships, sinking, and so forth.
Does any of this matter? Even without Rooney, Moyes would still have a squad composed of multiple title-winners, including the best striker and the maybe-best goalkeeper in the league (and excellence in those positions can cover a multitude of midfield sins). Results are results, after all, and if Moyes wins three trebles in a row he'll quickly find himself at the pinnacle of the footballing world. In opting for somebody like Moyes over somebody like Mourinho, United have at least ensured that whatever happens on and off the pitch, a destabilizing civil war is unlikely.

It may also be relevant at a boardroom level. United's financial model is built on the accretion of regionalized sponsorship deals with a vast and exhausting list of peculiar companies, most recently Apollo Tyres ("official tyre partner in UK and India"). The house that Ferguson built is the house in which the Glazers are selling wall-space, and the idea of trying to tout a club that's just sold one of their best (or at least most high-profile) players is not the kind of thing that gets wallets opening. Mister Potato's attachment to Rooney is not purely sentimental.But if United are worried that selling Rooney to Chelsea would make them look like Liverpool, then United are worried. After all, part of what set Liverpool on the path from where they were to where they are was a magnificently wrong-headed managerial appointment: either Roy Hodgson or Graeme Souness, depending on how long a perspective you feel like taking. Auras are delicate things, easily damaged and difficult to repair, and they affect everything: from the morale of opponents to the interest of transfer targets, from the mood of the crowd to the tills at the megastore.
Mourinho has told the British media that, for ethical reasons, he couldn't possibly countenance another bid for Rooney before Monday's game between the two clubs. The media -- having taken a moment to still their beating hearts, loosen their collars and cross their legs uncomfortably -- have concluded that this means a bid will definitely come afterwards.
This, in conjunction with Chelsea's apparent hijacking of Tottenham's move for Willian, has breathed new life into one of the summer's most unusual rumours: the initially-baffling-but-curiously-unflushable Rooney-for-Mata part-exchange-plus-maybe-some-cash hyphen-fest. From a United point of view, one way of ameliorating the loss of reputation that would follow Rooney out of the door is by exchanging him for an arguably better, certainly outstanding, and perhaps more necessary opponent ... It would equalize the power-balance.
From a Chelsea point of view, God knows (our own Callum Hamilton knows as well) that Juan Mata's really very good indeed, and has a superior beard. But this in itself is a neat illustration of how power, reputation and status all work. Mourinho could definitely get away with selling him, because he's Mourinho. Imagine if Rafa Benitez had tried it. Stamford Bridge would be ashes.
Click to expand...

I honestly think I have read better written articles by children.
 
sammsky1 said:
We are on the edge of having a genuinely world class team capable of beating the very best. But there are only a few players who will help us reach that stage of this teams evolution. And those players are very hard to sign.
vision.

I doubt SAF would have been able to convince Thiago or Fabregas. And Im sure there will be some squad strengthening activity that happens before the window closes.
Click to expand...

A simple but very good point you raise. You have to be a really top drawer player to improve a squad like ours and its always going to be hard to sign players of that quality. What club would be willing to let Fabregas go? Look how much Madrid have had to pay for Bale. Clubs aren't going to just roll over and let us sign their best players easily. I reckon Barcelona would've accepted a bid from us for Fabregas, we just didn't bid high enough. I would guess a bid of 50mil might entice them, but I'm not surprised they turned down 35mil. I don't believe in the whole "there's no value in the market" argument either, there hasn't been value in the market for ages. If you want a top player you've got to be willing to pay ridiculous amounts. Is a player like Bale worth 90mil, feck no, but all something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it. If Madrid are stupid enough to blow that much cash on him, their choice.
 
I appreciate that we don't know the exact ins and outs of our bids etc in this window, but the way we appear to have approached things doesn't seem that helpful to Moyes. Saving money seems to be the common theme (from the little we do know) rather than doing the utmost to quickly and decisively get our targets in so that Moyes can start to shape his squad for what will inevitably be a tough season.

Urgency seems to have been lost, everything seems ridiculously protracted - even the time it took to get the second Baines bid in, is nothing but time wasted, given that we hadn't bid for any other player in that position. I don't particularly want Fellaini and Baines but Moyes does, and if its going to take £35m to bring them in, just bid it and get them in so that Moyes can start integrating them into the team and making proper plans for the upcoming fixtures.

This being the first post-SAF season I think it should have been more important to completely back the new manager in the transfer market because following Fergie is going to be difficult anyway, for anyone never mind Moyes, and more so if he isn't being fully facilitated in making the few adjustments to the squad that he thinks we need.

It was always going to take a special bid for Barcelona to consider selling Cesc after they had just sold Thiago but at £30m+ add ons we didn't get close (esp given that the profit would need to be split with Arsenal). It's all well and good testing the waters and seeing what the response is with a low opening bid but the next bid should have given the something to think about.

All in all, I'm saying that Woodward and the Glazers should do what they need to do to get the players in that Moyes wants even if it means spending a few more million than they had hoped to.
 
ninety said:
A simple but very good point you raise. You have to be a really top drawer player to improve a squad like ours and its always going to be hard to sign players of that quality. What club would be willing to let Fabregas go? Look how much Madrid have had to pay for Bale. Clubs aren't going to just roll over and let us sign their best players easily. I reckon Barcelona would've accepted a bid from us for Fabregas, we just didn't bid high enough. I would guess a bid of 50mil might entice them, but I'm not surprised they turned down 35mil. I don't believe in the whole "there's no value in the market" argument either, there hasn't been value in the market for ages. If you want a top player you've got to be willing to pay ridiculous amounts. Is a player like Bale worth 90mil, feck no, but all something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it. If Madrid are stupid enough to blow that much cash on him, their choice.
Click to expand...

Really true that the players who could improve Utd are really by definition really hard to get. I just wish the club would give itself a fighting chance by not coming up with a low bid in Fabregas' case and not only once.
 
ninety said:
A simple but very good point you raise. You have to be a really top drawer player to improve a squad like ours and its always going to be hard to sign players of that quality. What club would be willing to let Fabregas go? Look how much Madrid have had to pay for Bale. Clubs aren't going to just roll over and let us sign their best players easily. I reckon Barcelona would've accepted a bid from us for Fabregas, we just didn't bid high enough. I would guess a bid of 50mil might entice them, but I'm not surprised they turned down 35mil. I don't believe in the whole "there's no value in the market" argument either, there hasn't been value in the market for ages. If you want a top player you've got to be willing to pay ridiculous amounts. Is a player like Bale worth 90mil, feck no, but all something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it. If Madrid are stupid enough to blow that much cash on him, their choice.
Click to expand...
You don't have to be an absolutely top drawer player to improve our cm, to be an improvement over clev and ando,even though i'm a fan of the former and used to be a big apologist of the latter.
 
Siorac said:
You don't have to be an absolutely top drawer player to improve our cm, to be an improvement over clev and ando,even though i'm a fan of the former and used to be a big apologist of the latter.
Click to expand...
Agree.
 
Top drawer player to improve upon cleverley (a decent talent, nowt special, the fact that he is seen by some as someone who improves our play greatly at times is tantamount to why even a decent player in cm would do 'wonders' for us), ando, old man Giggs and part time cb/cm Jones.... Lulz.
 
sammsky1 said:
David Moyes, Wayne Rooney and the importance of power

By Andi Thomas @Twisted_Blood on Aug 23 2013, 11:24a 1
176701481.0_standard_709.0.jpg

Michael Steele​
STAY CONNECTED
Manchester United have been adamant that Wayne Rooney will not be allowed to join Chelsea. Does this indicate a new insecurity at Old Trafford?
Transfers are about more than they seem. They're not just about (usually stupid) amounts of cash nor are they about (actually quite decent, most of the time) footballers. They're not even always about (exploitative, overcharged, unattractive, sponsor-laden) replica shirts. They're almost always about power, though: power assumed, power asserted and power exercised.
Most of the time this isn't particularly controversial or interesting. A player moves from a club that got relegated to a club that didn't: the power imbalance between the two clubs is obvious and so barely worthy of comment. Nor is it always the determining factor because sometimes a club simply decides to move a disappointment on or a new manager decides to refresh things or a player decides to return to his home club or country. But at the loud, top end of football, where the beasts are big and the money is bigger, power is crucial

Take Wayne Rooney. Except you can't, because he's absolutely, definitively, completely, totally, wholly and entirely not for sale. Well, not if you're Chelsea, anyway. Daniel Taylor's recent
exclusive in the Guardian was remarkable not only in its surety -- saying anything quite so certainly certain about the transfer market is unusual -- but in what it revealed about Manchester United's
thinking and the changed reality in which they find themselves.
​
It's not particularly surprising that United might want to keep Rooney: watching him play can at times be like watching a small child with a headache try to peel a banana, but he remains an effective player and his presence strengthens the squad. It isn't a revelation, either, that the Glazers were "bemused" by the offers received -- first £23m, then £25m -- both bids being almost hilariously low even for an apparently unsettled player. (Though "bemused" certainly suggests that however not for sale Rooney is, that there could be offers that would not be bemusing, and so he has a price.)
What's interesting is the revelation that it's not only the price and the desire to retain the player that's informing United's thinking. That would usually be enough, after all, but Taylor's piece specifically cites one further line of thinking.
Chelsea's £50m signing of Fernando Torres from Liverpool was widely seen throughout the game as a shift in dynamic between the two clubs. United are adamant they will not put themselves in the same position.​
While Torres's Chelsea career hasn't quite been an endless flood of blond-tinted goals, in hindsight the move -- "Liverpool have more history, Chelsea have more options" -- was of massive significance. Here was a club that had gone from contesting Chelsea in the Champions League semi-finals to selling them their best player. That they subsequently wasted the money didn't help, of course, but it wasn't a good look regardless of the way it's sliced.
The look is important. Power comes not just from what is, but from what is perceived. There are perhaps three managers in world football who could sell Wayne Rooney to a domestic rival and not look a bit diminished in the doing: the retiring Alex Ferguson; the Bayern-ing Pep Guardiola: and the most obvious and notable alternative to David Moyesfor the United position, the Chelsea-ing Jose Mourinho. That it's Mourinho who is trying to buy Rooney, and that United could well finish beneath the Londoners this season, only adds to the pressure. If Rooney joins Chelsea, he'll score goals; if United finish beneath Chelsea thanks to those goals, United will have effectively committed narrative suicide.
All of which goes to illustrate what a remarkable act of self-sabotage United committed by appointing David Moyes. This is not to say that Moyes is a bad manager (he isn't) or to state definitively that he isn't good enough to manage United to the standards that the club expects (he might be, though it seems perhaps more unlikely than likely). It's to point out that in moving from Ferguson to Moyes, Manchester United have significantly narrowed their ability to operate.
Where Ferguson (and David Gill) could buy and not-buy basically whoever they wanted, bad or good, weird or sensible, without copping too much flak -- hey, Bebe -- Moyes has to buy from the very top shelf. (He just hasn't earned it yet, Bebe.) Ferguson buys Fellaini and Baines? Highly sensible. Moyes buys Fellaini and Baines? What a terrible lack of imagination from the new man. Ferguson sells Rooney to Chelsea? The big man wins again. Moyes sells Rooney to Chelsea? Rats, ships, sinking, and so forth.
Does any of this matter? Even without Rooney, Moyes would still have a squad composed of multiple title-winners, including the best striker and the maybe-best goalkeeper in the league (and excellence in those positions can cover a multitude of midfield sins). Results are results, after all, and if Moyes wins three trebles in a row he'll quickly find himself at the pinnacle of the footballing world. In opting for somebody like Moyes over somebody like Mourinho, United have at least ensured that whatever happens on and off the pitch, a destabilizing civil war is unlikely.

It may also be relevant at a boardroom level. United's financial model is built on the accretion of regionalized sponsorship deals with a vast and exhausting list of peculiar companies, most recently Apollo Tyres ("official tyre partner in UK and India"). The house that Ferguson built is the house in which the Glazers are selling wall-space, and the idea of trying to tout a club that's just sold one of their best (or at least most high-profile) players is not the kind of thing that gets wallets opening. Mister Potato's attachment to Rooney is not purely sentimental.But if United are worried that selling Rooney to Chelsea would make them look like Liverpool, then United are worried. After all, part of what set Liverpool on the path from where they were to where they are was a magnificently wrong-headed managerial appointment: either Roy Hodgson or Graeme Souness, depending on how long a perspective you feel like taking. Auras are delicate things, easily damaged and difficult to repair, and they affect everything: from the morale of opponents to the interest of transfer targets, from the mood of the crowd to the tills at the megastore.
Mourinho has told the British media that, for ethical reasons, he couldn't possibly countenance another bid for Rooney before Monday's game between the two clubs. The media -- having taken a moment to still their beating hearts, loosen their collars and cross their legs uncomfortably -- have concluded that this means a bid will definitely come afterwards.
This, in conjunction with Chelsea's apparent hijacking of Tottenham's move for Willian, has breathed new life into one of the summer's most unusual rumours: the initially-baffling-but-curiously-unflushable Rooney-for-Mata part-exchange-plus-maybe-some-cash hyphen-fest. From a United point of view, one way of ameliorating the loss of reputation that would follow Rooney out of the door is by exchanging him for an arguably better, certainly outstanding, and perhaps more necessary opponent ... It would equalize the power-balance.
From a Chelsea point of view, God knows (our own Callum Hamilton knows as well) that Juan Mata's really very good indeed, and has a superior beard. But this in itself is a neat illustration of how power, reputation and status all work. Mourinho could definitely get away with selling him, because he's Mourinho. Imagine if Rafa Benitez had tried it. Stamford Bridge would be ashes.
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"Look at me - I can write."

What a load of fecking tosh.
 
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