Utd now just another big club | All "United losing identity" stuff here

Then why not keep Welbeck instead of wasting money to sign someone on loan, he would have got his chance. We are only in the PL and FA Cup, on occasionally will we have 2 games a week so if there is no knee operation then someone aint going to be playing.

I wanted us to keep Welbeck as well.

I'm just saying Wilson is fourth choice and will get a chance.
 
I agree with the sentiment of the OP here. I'm prepared to see what happens this season before I hang my hat on this pole though. Hopefully this is a year of one-off extravagance to get us back to where we need to be and we see Blackett, Januzaj and some others make the step up to be regular first teamers in the next season or two.
 
Who gives a shit if we have British players, we need players who are good enough
 
Like if you weren't just another big club before.
 
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This "holier than thou" attitude makes me sick. Yes we have a history of producing youth players, yes we have more history than Chelsea and City, but the game's changed and if you don't spend big you get left behind. If we scrap youth all together then I won't be happy, but Welbeck isn't good enough to hold down a permanent first XI position and Falcao is arguably the world's greatest striker.

Get with the times.
This.
 
Strange place the 'Caf, everyone complains we can't sign world class players, then we do and everyone says we are abandoning our youth policy.
 
fergie damaged the soul of the club? are you serious mate?

The current squad was full of rot, players who were not worthy of the shirt.. the old Fergie would have got rid of most of the squad. He wanted to go off with a bang, but potentially damaged the long term health of the club for short term gain. I have massive respect for Fergie, but there is no doubt he left the club in a poor position in terms of the health of the squad. Certain players should have been shipped out years ago.
 
It pretty much left with Sir Alex. It would have left long before that, had we not been so lucky to have him for so long.

What identity did we have in the last 5 years under SAF?
 
Arsenal have more of a British core than us at the moment, ffs. And most of those are waiting to be pushed out of the club. I'm not sure what our identity is anymore.

We're in transition and we have a new manager. A new identity will come in time and IMO this is the change that the club needs. Moyes' appointment was supposed to preserve SAF's methods, but it was a fecking fantasy. The club realises that now. There's not going to be another Alex Ferguson ever again.
 
Its not even just about wanting homegrown or local lads at the club, I'm realistic enough to realise that that group of 92 was a once off. Its the signing(seemingly) of ready-made stars with only a few years left at the top that concerns me, especially when we dump out a young player to make room for him.

Did we though? The story about Welbeck wanting to leave for first team football appeared well before the Falcao story. It's not unreasonable to conclude it's actually the other way around.

And as for "ready made stars with only a few years left" ...as opposed to ready made players with loads of milage left? Who'll keep youngsters out of the team for yonks? That could easily be read as a great tactic to bring through and motivate youngsters aware they'll get a good chance in a few years.

People are just complaining because we've sold a player they like. A player who wanted to leave because after 6 odd years of trying to break through, hadn't quite managed it. Drama llama alert.
 
Strange place the 'Caf, everyone complains we can't sign world class players, then we do and everyone says we are abandoning our youth policy.
We don't sign world class players, Glazers out, Woodward out. We sign a couple of world class players and these same people are crying about spending too much money or not giving a chance to our youth players. :wenger:
 
What's so great about British players?
I don't think it's British players as such, I see it as players who love the club. Losing Giggs, Vidic, Evra, Welbeck in one window is pretty sickening. Who's left? Rafa? Not to mention we have Rooney as captain (which disgusts me).
 
Love how this thread is created as soon as Welbeck is being sold. And not after we spent £150m. Welbeck's not good enough. It means more playing time for Januzaj and Wilson, who are so much more talented.
 
It aint so black and white but agree with the OP's and many others sentiments. It does echo of short termism, a quick and pricey fix. Liked better when the club was cagey and secretive when it came to dealings in the transfer market. Whole thing has played out in public. Do feel pretty grim about selling Welbeck and forthcoming loan of Falcao.

Prepared to spend the big bucks, United have in the past broken records and spent. Know our situation is unique but do squirm seeing figures. Very thing hate other clubs for. Done now, have to live with it. Very much wish we'd got Klopp, course you can't just expect managers to come running. But can't really fully get behind LVG, he is a pretty cold character and can only judge him on start he's made. But just worry about his volatile side and age.
 
What identity did we have in the last 5 years under SAF?
By identity, I'm sure he was talking about British core, and giving British players a chance that they don't always get at other clubs (even lower down the table).
If we didn't have Sir Alex for so long, we'd almost certainly have never had a United youth player featuring in every squad for the last 20 odd years, for example.
That has left with Sir Alex.

Wenger (like Sir Alex) has been there long enough to build a core. We're a regular club now, and our managers haven't got the time to concentrate on keeping United unique and 'special'.
Barcelona had a freak set of home grown players too under Guardiola. Now reality's kicked in. They're operating like everyone else.

It was Sir Alex and his continuity that made us - and allowed us to be - 'special'. That's gone.
 
Erm no, he's no more of a donkey than Rooney (who seems to dictate where he can play), Give him a fair chance in his proper position and he will do well, he has all the attributes and talent. Just see at Arsenal.
Agreed. I would have rather had Rooney offloaded than Welbeck who is essentially the anti- Rooney. Has all the qualities Rooney lacks but doesn't have that natural goal-scoring instict, which is one of the few qualities that has remained with Rooney along with his set piece taking. In a couple of years and with him improving that aspect of his game, I can definitely see Welbeck as being the superior player but in no way would I rather have kept Welbeck over having Falcao in the team.

You guys have to be shitting me. Welbeck has like 30 goals in 160 matches in his career compared to Rooney with more than 230 goals so far and fair to say he'll have the chance soon to be the all time goalscorer in Prem. And before someone says Welbeck plays on the wing it's not like Rooney doesn't play there occasionally or in CM in the past seasons.


I don't know if you are being romantic or something but I can't see Welbeck flourishing in Arsenal as well. He'll be a second fiddle to Sanchez, Giroud(when fit) and still won't be a 20 goals forward as some expect him to be.
 
Another moaning whiny thread..... Big names aren't signed and they complain... Sign the big names and they complain even more.


Some people are never happy.
 
Yeah lets all stick foreign players in our team, hell lets do away with our youth system while we are at it. :rolleyes: We are a British club and have always sought to promote from amongst our own.

You're not answering the question. Van Gaal's made Rooney captain, Fletcher vice-captain, he's given Blackett a chance, Lingard a debut, Keane a league debut. He likes Shaw, he's already made Smalling and Jones his main defenders but please do continue talking absolute nonsense about how all our players are now foreign.
 
Amazes me how blind people are. We have had to conduct this unprecedented spending to get back where we were. It's easy to give young players chances in a successful team, however when you're in a bit of a mire like we are at the moment you cannot do that so readily.

In LvG's first press conference he mentioned his first priority is the first team and then he'll look to integrate youth players but as we've seen with Blackett and James he's already done a bit of that and he seems to like Blackett a lot.
 
You guys have to be shitting me. Welbeck has like 30 goals in 160 matches in his career compared to Rooney with more than 230 goals so far and fair to say he'll have the chance soon to be the all time goalscorer in Prem. And before someone says Welbeck plays on the wing it's not like Rooney doesn't play there occasionally or in CM in the past seasons.


I don't know if you are being romantic or something but I can't see Welbeck flourishing in Arsenal as well. He'll be a second fiddle to Sanchez, Giroud(when fit) and still won't be a 20 goals forward as some expect him to be.

Rooney was given a shot straight away as a Striker, he has played only a handful of games on the wing or in midfield (mainly because he throws a strop at playing out of position). Had Welbeck been given a consistent chance upfront, he would have scored plenty of goals for us.
 
By identity, I'm sure he was talking about British core, and giving British players a chance that they don't always get at other clubs (even lower down the table).
If we didn't have Sir Alex for so long, we'd almost certainly have never had a United youth player featuring in every squad for the last 20 odd years, for example.
That has left with Sir Alex.

FFS how many times am I going to have to list British players/Youth players Van Gaal has used as thus already.
 
The current squad was full of rot, players who were not worthy of the shirt.. the old Fergie would have got rid of most of the squad. He wanted to go off with a bang, but potentially damaged the long term health of the club for short term gain. I have massive respect for Fergie, but there is no doubt he left the club in a poor position in terms of the health of the squad. Certain players should have been shipped out years ago.
you don't win the premiership with squads full of rot...
 
I don't think it's British players as such, I see it as players who love the club. Losing Giggs, Vidic, Evra, Welbeck in one window is pretty sickening. Who's left? Rafa? Not to mention we have Rooney as captain (which disgusts me).

Yeah I hear you, De Gea, Jones and Rafael is all we have left in that respect. Opportunity for some guys to make themselves heroes though. In many respects this is what we need, a complete overhaul and revamp, fresh faces and minds.
 
Did we though? The story about Welbeck wanting to leave for first team football appeared well before the Falcao story. It's not unreasonable to conclude it's actually the other way around.

And as for "ready made stars with only a few years left" ...as opposed to ready made players with loads of milage left? Who'll keep youngsters out of the team for yonks? That could easily be read as a great tactic to bring through and motivate youngsters aware they'll get a good chance in a few years.

Well to be honest, I'm probably overreacting a wee bit, and as I said, when I look back, I'll see we signed Shaw, Hererra, Rojo and Blind who are all 24 or younger, which I like. Its not just about Danny though, I've always said I wouldn't want us going down the Madrid 'galacticos' route(not saying we definitely are).
 
This notion that United are somehow totally different to every other big club always struck me as self serving bullshit. All big clubs are as special and unique as each other really.

Thing is, we can't have it both ways. People have been complaining for years that we don't move in the transfer market the way a club of our size should. Well guess what, doing that was always going to come at a price.

I'm not totally happy with our transfer business either but it has less to do with us betraying our principles (which were always quite subjective anyway) and more to do with us not investing all this money in a more coherent way.
 
You're not answering the question. Van Gaal's made Rooney captain, Fletcher vice-captain, he's given Blackett a chance, Lingard a debut, Keane a league debut. He likes Shaw, he's already made Smalling and Jones his main defenders but please do continue talking absolute nonsense about how all our players are now foreign.

Oh please, I was responding sarcastically about your comment on 'whats so great about British players', I am fully aware our team is not full of foreigners. From saying that line, you were clearly implying it would be fine to field a team of foreign players, that was the way I read it.
 
FFS how many times am I going to have to list British players/Youth players Van Gaal has used as thus already.
And we've seen how that's worked out. Let's see how many play when we start really playing properly.
Anyway, I have no issues with it. United are just another big club.

We had a set of incredible youngsters two decades ago and a manager here for long enough to do things his way. We now don't. Things were always going to change.
There's nothing special about us.
 
Oh please, I was responding sarcastically about your comment on 'whats so great about British players', I am fully aware our team is not full of foreigners. From saying that line, you were clearly implying it would be fine to field a team of foreign players, that was the way I read it.

Well you read it wrong.
 
You guys have to be shitting me. Welbeck has like 30 goals in 160 matches in his career compared to Rooney with more than 230 goals so far and fair to say he'll have the chance soon to be the all time goalscorer in Prem. And before someone says Welbeck plays on the wing it's not like Rooney doesn't play there occasionally or in CM in the past seasons.


I don't know if you are being romantic or something but I can't see Welbeck flourishing in Arsenal as well. He'll be a second fiddle to Sanchez, Giroud(when fit) and still won't be a 20 goals forward as some expect him to be.

I meant I would have rather kept Welbeck, as in 2-3 years he will almost certainly be a better all round player than Rooney or even RVP for that matter will be at that time. One of them is increasingly improving his game, whilst the other two are regressing. Welbeck certainly won't be second fiddle to Giroud in my opinion, either. As other posters have also said, Welbeck actually had a good goal/minute ratio last season, quite similair to RVP himself. Forget his total record; it's about how they are performing now.
 
Yep, let us moan. Let us moan that we are signing world class signing. Let us moan that less money is on the pitch and more in Glazer's pockets and more in on the pitch.

You can't win!
 
Manchester United doesn't feel like Manchester United right now. They just seem like a club that happens to be based in the city. I'll give LvG a chance, but if this is the way it continues I'm not sure how I'll feel about it.

There used to be something unique about United players. You'd always hear stories from England camps about how the Utd lads were a breed apart. Now we're just importing players who may well be top talents, but don't seemed to be vetted for personality the way Fergie used to do. I really hope this doesn't end in tears the ways van Gaal's stints at Barca and Bayern did.

I really don't like it. Even if we win a title, it won't feel like an achievement that was built in Manchester.
Is this just based on Falcao? Herrera seems a top bloke, Shaw is exactly the kind of player we've always bought, Rojo I've no idea on but clearly was desperate to join, Blind is someone whose personality van Gaal will know extremely well, di Maria is a megastar but hard-working to go with it. Falcao is weird and the most un-United of recent times but I don't think that's enough for the fairly sweeping statement I've bolded from you there.

It's unquestionably going to be a very different experience watching United this year - the 6 signings we've made are all likely to be starters and that's over half our first XI. Change for the previous 20 years has tended to be gradual and this one is going to be sudden and may hurt to begin with. We are just another big club - or more accurately a giant that hadn't really pushed our weight around in the transfer market for some time. We've woken up with a bit of a start after what's happened over the last 12 months and seem to be making up for lost time now. We're watching a new team being built in a pretty short space of time, my view is that it's pretty exciting and when we get back to the top it'll feel all the better. "Built in Manchester" is a nice thought, but are we really getting that feeling from Welbeck and Cleverley being on the bench for the title winning match? I'm as big a fan of Danny as anyone, but he's not going to be the mainstay of our team.