Oh yeah Badstuber. Though Alaba was only 1 year at their youth academic, and also I'm not sure if van Gaal promoted him or the previous manager did?
Utd now just another big club | All "United losing identity" stuff here
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Oh yeah Badstuber. Though Alaba was only 1 year at their youth academic, and also I'm not sure if van Gaal promoted him or the previous manager did?
Did you feel the same way in 01-02 when we bought RvN, Veron, Forlan, Blanc and Carroll, or in 03-04 when we bought Ronaldo, Heinze, Saha, Kleberson, Howard, Smith and Djemba-Djemba (not to mention Bellion, Miller and Martin), or in 07-08 with Tevez, Nani, Anderson, Hargreaves, Kuszczak, Rafael and Fabio, or is it just this year that our bringing in "mercenary players" is upsetting you?
So United never gave chances to youth players at the Carling Cup? Okay then.
Fed up of seeing this all over the news. We're continuing to give youth a chance and that's clear for anyone to see. We needed to spend big and we have done. Bitter ex employees need to keep their opinions to themselves.
We added those players to a very different group of players. Can we really compare the 01-02 era to today? Football has gone crazy since those days.
Well no not everyone. That’s a very vague way of looking at it and ignores about 95% of the picture
I wanted us to sign players who brought us qualities that we were actually severely lacking. Leadership, drive, the ability to play in midfield or at fullback without being shit at it/injured all the time.
I didn't want us to sign Mata because he wasn’t what we needed. He was a transfer muppet purchase, and to an extent the same applied with Van Persie…only difference being the money we’ve spent since suggests we could have signed him regardless, and he actually brought additional quality to the team. Now we also have Falcao and Di Maria…great, but are they leaders? Can they play at fullback or in central midfield?
I’m not that caught up on how much we spend on what, as long as we don’t blow so much money on something we don’t need, that we have nothing left to strengthen the areas that we do need to. Problem is, this is exactly what we’ve done.
Case and point at the moment…we’ve sold a quality player in Welbeck, to make room for yet another high profile attacking player (we already have so many we can’t get the system to work around them)…yet if we played at the weekend, we have a total of 0 people fit who can play fullback…and it’s not like we have an extensive list of injured fullbacks. There’s two, and one’s nearly always injured, and the other’s only 18.
This isn’t an issue that suddenly cropped up BECAUSE Welbeck was sold…that was just the cherry on the cake. We’ve not addressed the weaknesses in our squad at all and we’ve now given a massive helping hand to a team we could very likely end up in important and direct competition with. It was a stupid thing to do that’s capped off a year or so of Manchester United repeatedly doing stupid things.
Ethos, tradition or whatever. I probably wouldn’t be so uncomfortable with it, if it didn’t involve repeatedly doing stupid things.
I don’t think you can argue there’s not been a change with how we’ve approached things this summer. We’re trying to buy our way out of a hole. Maybe to an extent that is necessary, but there’s a bloke at the top of the whole selling ladders, and we’ve just wasted all our money on a collection of golden plated shovels instead, because they looked shiny.
Tevez, Veron, Berbatov, Forlan, Van Persie, etc…half the names you mentioned either proved pointless or counter productive anyway, so it’s not exactly the most convincing argument.
For some reason you’ve made this all about Welbeck. Take him out of the equation, and I’m not sure how that changes the fact United have spent a shitload of money like they never have before, and somehow without really improving their team in the areas it desperately needed improving. I even said on the day that Welbeck going wouldn’t be a major problem in itself apart from that he was being given to Arsenal. He may have forced a move there, and if so good for him, but from the club’s point of view, it’s a really silly move. Not quite as silly as signing Mata when the manager didn’t even know what position he was planning to use him in, or appointing a manager on a six year contract then sacking them after less than a year, or paying £28m for a player with a £24m buyout clause, or addressing a severe shortage of fullbacks by selling more of them than you buy, etc etc.
I mean, it’s like I said before. If I worked on a ship, and one day the ship suddenly has a new captain/crew/different way of doing things, and they steered the ship directly towards an ice berg and were all running around panicking and doing things that didn’t seem at all productive. The main reason I would be worried/sceptical wouldn’t be because this was different, it’d be because it would look alarmingly likely to end up killing me.
What do you want me to do, pretend I think the club is going in the right direction? For the sake of not looking like I care too much about Danny Welbeck
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@RaDamo Falcao @Radamel FalCinao
Maybe we should merge this thread with the "who are we" thread? Just a thought.
@RaDamo Falcao @Radamel FalCinao
Maybe we should merge this thread with the "who are we" thread? Just a thought.
If he keeps on scoring like before, it would be hard to argue against buying him
Thats the stupidest statement I have read all summer... And I spent most of the time in Transfer muppetry....
Would you rather have Welbeck sold to Sunderland/Tottenham against his interest??
Forgive Noodle for he knows not what he does, he listed all the qualities we need in players at the start of his post and then goes on to say that Welbeck is the exact type of player we need even though he meets none of them.
I feel for him, I really do, I felt similar after Ronaldo and Beckham (except they were loads better than Welbeck and we traded down with our replacements not up as we have done with Falcao)...
Welbeck was a back up striker and occasional winger. Falcao is a pure CF. How is he replacing Welbeck?
No were going to sign a mix of mostly players with potentially long futures with us, and the odd one or two meant for the short term, as we have this summer. You sound another who is just who is butthurt because it's welbeck who is gone. That obviously means going with the rhetoric of "short-term-ism and not believing in youth!" that ignorant people have been peddling about without actually looking at all our signings in a reasonable manner.
What a lot of you are also ignoring is that people at the club probably or the ones that mater simply don't rate welbeck as highly as you do. And he needs and demands games.
No, you're completely entitled to feel however you do about United's transfer activity. However this is a thread about United's identity being broken by the sale of Danny Welbeck. It's what the OP is about, and what you initially responded to. Whether you think we've done good business or not on the whole is surely a different argument, and one you've sort of semi-augmented your initial stance to. But still one that doesn't need to be married for drama's sake to the idea of our crumbling identity. Or indeed, comparissons to the sinking of the Titanic.
Ships and ladders, I like it. Not entirely sure what you're banging on about throughout the whole (hole?) post, but I like it.
So, if we use our 'gold plated shovels' - by which I guess you mean the 6 quality players we've signed this window - are you saying that we'll dig ourselves into deeper trouble? That would mean being worse off than we were last season and finishing 7th or lower wouldn't it? I don't think that's gonna happen, man.
I genuinely dunno what you mean with the 'bloke at the top selling ladders' thing. Are you saying that there was a player you wanted us to buy but that we failed to? If so, who?
The ship stuff at the end was cool, it reminded me a bit of that Celine Dion song. Although I'd have thought that was more of a fitting metaphor for last season under Moyes! Especially since you're the fella who started that thread about our 'zombie passing', which was bang on the money and is now being addressed!
Give it time, my man. Our new manager has come straight from a world cup semi final to a massive club in crisis. The signings have been good, and your post under-rates/ignores Blind, Rojo, Herrera and Shaw who are collectively the most important 4 signings we've made in about 10 years. Let this team settle and begin to gel before damning them or the approach.
And for heaven's sake, stick to the cool metaphors, like zombies
Hey don't shoot me, I'm not moaning about buying Falcao and selling Welbeck and if you didn't sense the sarcasm in my post then I apologise.
If anything we've replaced Welbeck with Wilson (or Hernandez with Falcao - switch, mix and match the incoming forwards with the outgoing as you see fit as we have the same number of forwards as we did at the start of the window) and I'm all for that considering Welbeck wants first team football and we can't offer it to him.
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At the moment none is arguing his quality. The best number 9 in the world. But he is just short term signing. He won't be the best or great forever.
Neither will Ronaldo who's a year older than Falcao, yet I bet if Ronaldo had 'come home' no-one would be gibbering on about him being a 'short term fix' or complaining about his wages.
Likewise when Barca signed Suarez for 70m after a joyless season last year, a player just 11 months younger than Falcao, I didn't read anyone criticising it as a 'short term signing'.
The entire "short", "long" term is funny to me. Every signing cannot love Utd and cannot stay here for 7-8 years, at the end of the day what were we supposed to do ? Keep an unhappy Welbeck ? Keep an unhappy Chicharito ?
Ships and ladders, I like it. Not entirely sure what you're banging on about throughout the whole (hole?) post, but I like it.
So, if we use our 'gold plated shovels' - by which I guess you mean the 6 quality players we've signed this window - are you saying that we'll dig ourselves into deeper trouble? That would mean being worse off than we were last season and finishing 7th or lower wouldn't it? I don't think that's gonna happen, man.
I genuinely dunno what you mean with the 'bloke at the top selling ladders' thing. Are you saying that there was a player you wanted us to buy but that we failed to? If so, who?
The ship stuff at the end was cool, it reminded me a bit of that Celine Dion song. Although I'd have thought that was more of a fitting metaphor for last season under Moyes! Especially since you're the fella who started that thread about our 'zombie passing', which was bang on the money and is now being addressed!
Give it time, my man. Our new manager has come straight from a world cup semi final to a massive club in crisis. The signings have been good, and your post under-rates/ignores Blind, Rojo, Herrera and Shaw who are collectively the most important 4 signings we've made in about 10 years. Let this team settle and begin to gel before damning them or the approach.
And for heaven's sake, stick to the cool metaphors, like zombies
That's a good critique of noodle's particularly entertaining style of moaning there. It's all very funny, and colourfully described, but it doesn't actually work, or make a huge amount of sense when you apply it. Since it relies on ignoring loads of things that don't fit. Which is interesting since his first post accused everyone of being childish, when my definition of childish would be to get overly emotional about losing something, judge it's replacement before you've even seen it, then continue to stomp around making ever more obscure sweeping points rather than admit any kind of climbdown.
Oh look. A metaphor.
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Look at it this way. Investing in world-class players who will bring results is the only way the "United Identity" can be sustained. Surely it is possible to retain the identity while still staying relevant in a financially competitive environment.
This is such an incredibly negative outlook.
The caf is an incredibly negative place to be right now, despite the best transfer window in 30 years.
99% of football clubs and their fans around the world can only dream of doing what we've done in the last 3 months, yet it seems to have sent our fans into a spiral of despair, depression and in some cases questioning if its worth carrying on in this life.
Every silver lining has a cloud and all that.
I've come a bit late to this so maybe it's been said already but: a lot of the youth prospects that haven't made it were created on Phelan's watch. So it's a bit rich of him to be saying this now.
It's also ignoring the fact that we underinvested in known quality that would have helped bring on those players like Welbeck (although I personally feel he's as far as his game will take him). It's ironic that the act of doing this now has meant homegrown players being shipped out.
Before that, even with the class of 92, we had expensive, world class players in key positions that could help them along: Keano, RVN, Stam, Robson, Cole, Vida, Rio. That is something we haven't had enough of in the last few years.
It's also ignoring the fact that we underinvested in known quality that would have helped bring on those players like Welbeck (although I personally feel he's as far as his game will take him). It's ironic that the act of doing this now has meant homegrown players being shipped out.
Before that, even with the class of 92, we had expensive, world class players in key positions that could help them along: Keano, RVN, Stam, Robson, Cole, Vida, Rio. That is something we haven't had enough of in the last few years.
This all day.
Unless he meant a literal ladder, and actual gold plated shovels...
Actually, I could totally imagine Woody buying those if he happened upon them down at B&Q - the guy's a maniac when it comes to splashing the cash. I'm not complaining, but damn that man can spend. No chance he'd be able to walk past some gold plated shovels without being tempted!
Well it's all related. Welbeck has been sold as a result of our fumbling transfer activity. It's part of the club or its identity changing as it's not generally been a strategy in the past.
Phelan might be referring exclusively to Welbeck, but it isn't necessarily just people throwing a hissy fit over Welbeck...and even if it is, you surely can't sell a talented player to a rival and then expect everyone to be happy about it or not ask questions?
It's not as if people only like Welbeck just because he has silly hair and is a right laugh and was born 2ft from the Stretford End and whatever. They like him because he's a good player who they don't want to see playing for Arsenal instead of us. Especially when not selling him seemed like a perfectly plausable and sensible option.
I mean, you don’t see people fretting over Cleverley being sent to Villa (in fact, people were giving him dogs abuse for not going there permanently and costing us a fee, but that’s because people are spanners).
Where identity comes in as well with Welbeck is that in the past the club wouldn’t flog its talented youth players around to fund other transfers. Young players usually leave because they’re not good enough. You can point to Rossi or Pogba, but Pogba wasn’t sold at all and Rossi was reluctantly at his request and with a buy back clause in his contract…he wasn’t a make weight for some massive spending spree.
If I had to guess I would say Woodward and some other suits sat around and decided Welbeck would be going because we could get money for him, regardless of whether he was good enough talent and attitude wise to be at the club or not. That’s not an approach I particularly like at all. We should be fghting to keep good players, not helping them out the door.
Woodie finally gets the Glazers to splash the cash to get our club back to winning ways and there are actually posters in here shitting on what he has done... ingrates.
Welbeck went to Arsenal, get over it....he wasn't bloody Cantona.
Where was all this vitriol when Becks was sold?
Welbeck went to Arsenal, get over it....he wasn't bloody Cantona.
Where was all this vitriol when Becks was sold?
Well…to be fair…most times we have bar from a few periods in our history. Notably 1991-1994 and in more recent years.
Don't some people get tired of hearing about the Class of 92 and the players involved are quite happy to bang on about it as well? It is like England winning the Cup in 1966 and people hitting every England team over the head with it ever since. The folks saying about the legacy. The Class if 92 was 22 bloody years ago, 22 years for goodness sake. Where has the legacy been in the last number of years. Nowhere. Yes we have had the odd player come into the team from the youth ranks. Have they been top class? No. We just struck gold that year and have been scrabbling about and holding onto players for too long trying to replicate it. It won't happen on that scale ever again. People need to grasp that fact. Either we build a side to keep us at the top or you promote kids and don't moan about being midtable. They are the options.
See I’m not really sure where I’m supposed to be climbing down from seeing as my view has been pretty consistent and I’m not sure what part of it you’re expecting to change?
The childish comment was aimed at the predictable “oh look, a negative comment on United, lets all be dismissive and slag off Phelan even though half of us were defending him to slag off Moyes only a few months ago” nonsense.
As for Falcao. I think he’s an excellent player, but the fact is he’s spent nearly a year barely playing any football due to injury. He also no more than a few days ago declared he was close to his dream of signing for Real Madrid, on his twitter, then deleted it and pretended he never said anything. I think it’s fairly obvious United weren’t his first choice, and if at the end of the season Real Madrid decide they would like Falcao to play for them, guess what I think is going to happen…and guess exactly what Manchester United will be able to do about it.
That’s not a reflection against him at all and it’s not some batshit mental, overly emotional nonsense. It’s the situation Manchester United has put itself in.
There might be a plan behind all this but on the face of it, if there is a plan, it seems to involve a lot of random button pushing and hoping for the best.
Your "guess" ignores one major fact - that the manager, being the bloke who is trusted to not only pick the side, but to look after the club's long term development, decided he was surplus to requirements.
He was not forced out of the club, he was told he wouldn't be first choice and with Falcao in, he evidently sees the writing on the wall. He then chose to move on.
Some people on here really need to get their heads out of their backsides to be honest. Why should the club "fight" to keep a player who isn't going to start and wants to move on? It's not good for the club or the player to have him sitting on the bench or worse, rotting in the reserves.
Bottom line - the manager, a very experienced and level headed bloke looked at him and saw what most other people can see - he's a decent player but not better than Rooney or RVP, even before Falcao came in.
There's far to much romanticising about Welbeck. People need to stop looking back with rise tinted specs and look at the reality - that we're stronger now than we were last week.
The club needs to back Van Gaal to buy the players he wants and to compete for the very best players where needed. All players need to earn a place in the first team and decisions about who comes in and who stays need to be based on what the manager wants long term. It's that simple for me.
The fans need to back Van Gaal, and frankly, those whining after the transfer window we've had need to look at where we were this time last year.
Again, Welbeck was asking to leave last season when Moyes was still at the helm and Falcao was just a glint in Woodward's eye...
Football has changed so much since the 90s and early 2000s, it's unbelievable. I'm feeling sad that we've let Welbeck and Kagawa leave.
Our transfers in the past twenty odd years used to only be the odd signing every couple of years to replace retiring players or sold players. Young promising players like Rio, Rooney were bought paying high fees rarely. The core of our first team was always our home bred players. Can't be done now sadly.
Building a team organically requires 3-4 years. The huge amount of money in football and the financial repercussions of missing out on the CL means we won't be giving our managers that much time to build a team capable of doing so.
Our transfers in the past twenty odd years used to only be the odd signing every couple of years to replace retiring players or sold players. Young promising players like Rio, Rooney were bought paying high fees rarely. The core of our first team was always our home bred players. Can't be done now sadly.
Building a team organically requires 3-4 years. The huge amount of money in football and the financial repercussions of missing out on the CL means we won't be giving our managers that much time to build a team capable of doing so.
If you think that the crap we were playing last year could have been fixed by 1 or 2 bit part signings you're mistaken and deluded.
As much as I love Ronaldo, I think I still prefer not to sacrifice Januzaj for a 29/30 years old Ronaldo. If Januzaj stays with Ronaldo comes here then I will be really happy with it because we would still have Januzaj as a long term future.
11 months younger is like 1 year younger. It is still a big gap. When a striker turn 30 especially an injury prone, don't expect him to be the best and great forever. The similar thing about RVP. We signed him for a short term anyway.
We had the discussion in the Lahm interview thread and I actually share his opinion that if you want to be among the best teams in the world you need to have a footballing philosophy and a system for which you are going to buy the players. In the past SAF was responsible for all of this but we most likely won't get another manager for such a long period of time that can implement these things. That's why I think we need someone or if possible a couple of people at the club who will come up with a Manchester United football philosophy and a formation that we want to go with and then build a team fitting to the philosophy and system and bring in the right manager/coaches that fit to our philosophy and system.
I think if we would take such an approach we could build an identity again that is very much our own. The only thing I'm not quite certain of is who we could bring in to implement such a wholesale club philosophy. I would love if one of out former players could be that guy but non of them for me really stands out as a football visionary who could fulfill such a role.
The thing that we definitely need to prevent though is to bring in 4-5 different managers in the next 5-10 years who all have a different footballing philosophy and need us to rebuild the squad every other year to fit their style.
I think if we would take such an approach we could build an identity again that is very much our own. The only thing I'm not quite certain of is who we could bring in to implement such a wholesale club philosophy. I would love if one of out former players could be that guy but non of them for me really stands out as a football visionary who could fulfill such a role.
The thing that we definitely need to prevent though is to bring in 4-5 different managers in the next 5-10 years who all have a different footballing philosophy and need us to rebuild the squad every other year to fit their style.
And also I'm not so sure if they even care about Suarez age when they have Neymar, Pedro and Messi. Let's face it, Falcao is a short term signing. I'm surprise to someone who can't tell if it's not a short term signing, and it is still a loan deal and it's not part of criticising at all. No idea why do you think it's a criticising by calling one of your signing as a short term.
Our weaknesses we have looked to address. Herrera, Blind, Di Maria can all play in there, its that vs Cleverly, Fletcher, Anderson. Safe to say for a lot of people that was the most worriesome area. I think we've done well to try and rectify that. Whether those players work out that we will see. But it's clear we have tried to correct that. Central defense has been an issue linked both to individual errors from central defenders, makeshift fullbacks (especially on the right with Smalling/Jones/Valencia). It's not ideal that only have one fullback still for the RB. But even central defense, our inadequacy there was linked to a porous midfield and the fact that we don't dominate possession like we used to.
We shall see whether the players work out. But to say with the purchase of Rojo, Shaw, Herrera, Blind, Di Maria, Falcao that we haven't tried to address the inadequacies is ridiculous. Ideally there would have been a Vidal or a Hummels there for us but it's still on paper a massive improvement. How some can't see that and are presuming the worst about players they haven't even seen play for us for me defies sense. Defense is a worry (still), midfield (on paper) less so. Overall are we miles stronger? Yes we are. We have bought ourselves a team capable enough to get ourselves into the CL (first priority).
We shall see whether the players work out. But to say with the purchase of Rojo, Shaw, Herrera, Blind, Di Maria, Falcao that we haven't tried to address the inadequacies is ridiculous. Ideally there would have been a Vidal or a Hummels there for us but it's still on paper a massive improvement. How some can't see that and are presuming the worst about players they haven't even seen play for us for me defies sense. Defense is a worry (still), midfield (on paper) less so. Overall are we miles stronger? Yes we are. We have bought ourselves a team capable enough to get ourselves into the CL (first priority).