We have definitely lost our soul in a way

I find threads like this extremely strange.

Firstly, as expected by most sensible posters, we used plenty of young players last season despite our 150 million spending spree and the whole "United Soul Death i.e you sold my Welbeck 2014" nonsense. Why not see us not use young players and then get all worked up.

Secondly, right now the club is in a phase of instability where it is trying to get back to the level it's been for almost 20 years. It's easy to play young players when you have a well oiled winning machine (United) or the expectations of reaching 4th every year which you will do anyway (arsenal). It's harder for today's United which has a pressure to get back to winning ways and show its standing in the game again, and changing its entire playing style completely. It's as if fans want everything at once. Let's have success. Let's have youth. Let's have top players. Let's have all of that while changing from counter attack to possession.

Thirdly, if Januzaj plays like he did 13-14, or any youngster plays like Giggs when he was 18, you think he won't get in? Lvg believes in merit. If a player shows his quality he will play, he has shown it already.
 
People are saying that spending £150m last Summer was a necessity, but was it really? Last season showed that it was more important to get us playing as a team rather than have an XI full of superstars.
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to devuelop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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I like it when you say "we have definitely" and end the sentence with "in a way".
 
It’s all well and good developing young players, but the best of them only tend to stay with the club if the club is fighting for honors. As we saw with numerous Spurs players and as we are seeing with Sterling now, unless you’re competing for trophies, then even the younger players would want out and the club won’t be able to reap the rewards of the years of efforts spent in developing the player. We are doing absolutely the right thing right now. We need to get back on our feet first and make ourselves an attractive destination once again, a place where players would want to spend their entire careers at.
 
Kazi said:
People are saying that spending £150m last Summer was a necessity, but was it really? Last season showed that it was more important to get us playing as a team rather than have an XI full of superstars.
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While ADM deal hasn't been working out for us but Herrera and Blind have been great acquisition whereas Rojo also helped our defense. LvG i think is spot on in identifying our weaknesses as well with this summer transfers and hopefully there will be a couple more.

Playing as a team of course is important but personally will rather have some quality players rather than insisting with drosses and deadwoods like Cleverley, Evans, etc but keeping some part of our fans happy that we didnt lose our soul bullshite.
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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It would be interesting to look at Fergie's first season or two in charge. It's common knowledge he took over a failing youth system and it took him years to get it going. Obviously the situation is not quite as dire now, in terms of facilities anyway, but there are parallels.

I suspect he bought plenty of established players when he started and didn't rely on a youth team that wasn't there.
 
I can't speak for everyone but the more youngsters we give a chance the better. They'll be the future of the club.

I also see the need for a bit of experience here and there given how much we lost last summer.
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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Yea or given how 'much' playing time Adnan got last year there's simply no guarantee that he'll take over ADM so it's not surprising that people would want one of the very best wingers you can get there instead of watching, e.g., Young (nothing personal against him, like the guy, etc.) Depay would probably still play on the other wing.
 
Kazi said:
People are saying that spending £150m last Summer was a necessity, but was it really? Last season showed that it was more important to get us playing as a team rather than have an XI full of superstars.
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And team work with better players leads to a better team.

I'd like to see Barcelona win the treble with great team work but no great individuals.
 
Oh not not this again.

If we do sell ADM we're left with Young and Memphis as natural wingers. Januzaj is not a winger so we'll need another winger cause we cant go into season with just 2. Nothing special there.

Its about the balance, you need good players in their positions, you need superstars and its nice to have few youngsters too. We bought Shaw and Memphis, other players we bought are in good age for footballers.

In 1996 you could win a league with kids. Its not possible anymore.

I'm sick and tired of the United way, soul and similar stuff.
 
Kazi said:
People are saying that spending £150m last Summer was a necessity, but was it really? Last season showed that it was more important to get us playing as a team rather than have an XI full of superstars.
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Without Di Maria's assists would we have got fourth?
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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Last 2 years? Name the last truly significant player to come through the ranks? Or to have a truly breakout season for United. If anything we have been spoilt by the success of United's youth academy over the last couple of decades compared with most teams. The class of '92 bollix was freak, that will never happen again.
 
Mali_Zeus said:
Oh not not this again.

If we do sell ADM we're left with Young and Memphis as natural wingers. Januzaj is not a winger so we'll need another winger cause we cant go into season with just 2. Nothing special there.

Its about the balance, you need good players in their positions, you need superstars and its nice to have few youngsters too. We bought Shaw and Memphis, other players we bought are in good age for footballers.

I'm sick and tired of the United way, soul and similar stuff.[/QUOTE]
It really is tedious, and a misplaced sense of our own self importance. Every club is trying to win. As much as you can, you try to do it the right way. There will be times when young players get more chances and times when young players get less chances. Sometimes there will be spending sprees and sometimes value signings. Some fans are so quick to get on the back of things supposedly going wrong. How about we see 2/3 years of no chances to youth development instead of making claims, instead of the summer after the season where we actually have played a lot of youngsters.
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Unless I'm missing someone, it'll be the first time you have no youth products or even a single Manc in the starting lineup.

Welcome to the "soulless" club. It's great. You'll win loads and have morons telling you it doesn't mean anything.
 
duffer said:
Unless I'm missing someone, it'll be the first time you have no youth products or even a single Manc in the starting lineup.

Welcome to the "soulless" club. It's great. You'll win loads and have morons telling you it doesn't mean anything.
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Nope we'll still players from the youth ranks playing a role as has been the case the last two decades.

I don't see why they have to be in our first choice 11. That wasn't even the case last season.
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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Actually we do however there's not many quality talent to develop any more and had been so for quite some time. Since the class of 92 burst into scene we mostly had 'squad players' who were mostly appropriate to clubs like Sunderland and Everton
 
duffer said:
Unless I'm missing someone, it'll be the first time you have no youth products or even a single Manc in the starting lineup.

Welcome to the "soulless" club. It's great. You'll win loads and have morons telling you it doesn't mean anything.
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At least we have some English players. ;)
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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If that is what we always were than we didn't lose our soul.
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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There has to be a balance and the team should not fall so much that we struggle to win anything and even make top-4. As we have seen in last few years, making top-4 is not a guarantee any more with many teams competing for established players who promise instant results with less risk, and they do not have any such guilt regarding using young players.

And why making top-4 as well as winning trophies is important in the context of giving young players a chance? Because we can develop young players as much as we want but if we are not winning trophies and not making top-4, the same young players will leave as soon as the bigger clubs come in. We are losing De Gea despite us giving him a big role at a young age and despite the fact that we are in top-4 and despite the fact that we are willing to give obscene wages. Now imagine if we were not in top-4 and not thought of as title contenders, then we would have no bargaining power to even ask him to stay. Why do Southampton keep losing their best players year after year despite bringing up promising young players? The answer is that young players do not have any loyalty anymore and as soon as they are any good, they will leave unless we are also among the top clubs, playing in Europe and in contention for winning trophies.

Its a two way street with young players these days. You as a supporter can feel pride in developing them but the players themselves will not give any credit to the sacrifice the team made while they were being developed, and once they become any good they will stay only if the team is also winning trophies.
 
RedStarUnited said:
Reading through these transfer tweets and I see very low support for our youngsters. 2 bad years has shown us for what we probably always were. No one wants to wait for players to develop anymore, If Di Maria is being sold then you would think Adnan or Depay even would be getting supported to replace him..Nope - The caf muppets want Reus.
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I thought the same the first time I visited Old Trafford to be honest.

And as many people already pointed out, the days are over when you could field an 11 with players that were not world class on every position.
 
duffer said:
Unless I'm missing someone, it'll be the first time you have no youth products or even a single Manc in the starting lineup.

Welcome to the "soulless" club. It's great. You'll win loads and have morons telling you it doesn't mean anything.
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That's actually quite depressing.

Heck, I'll be over the moon if we win a trophy this season, but I'll wager it just won't ever be the same as the Fergie's Fledglings era. There is a special sort of proudness connected to winning things with players you've developed yourself, as I'm sure Barca fans can add to.
 
Our youngster focus has always been overstated. We have given time to McNair, Wilson and Blackett last season, that's probably more than in any of the final 10 seasons under Ferguson and we have produced almost exclusively squad players since Giggs era. You cannot rely on Evans, O'Shea and Welbeck to win you trophies as key members.
 
Sarni said:
Our youngster focus has always been overstated. We have given time to McNair, Wilson and Blackett last season, that's probably more than in any of the final 10 seasons under Ferguson and we have produced almost exclusively squad players since Giggs era. You cannot rely on Evans, O'Shea and Welbeck to win you trophies as key members.
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Well... We did.
 
kundalini said:
Giggs would. A young Scholes wouldn't. It took Scholes a long time to become a top player. His chances of making it at the current United would be about as good as Pereira's.
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seriously? At age 21, Paul Scholes scored 10 goals in 29 matches including a goal in the derby. Considering the hype surrounding the likes of Forlan, Jones and OShea because they were able to pass the ball straight, Paul would have been hailed the new Messiah
 
Barca's academy hasn't produced quality players for awhile. They ain't much better than us
 
BennyBlanco said:
McNair and Blackett played most of their games out of necessity due to horrendous injury issues rather than actually giving them a chance in the Fergie mould in fairness, Januzaj had large periods of being frozen out entirely, Wilson was the only young player LvG threw in for a few selective apperances when other more established players were available to him.

Anyway, if we go ahead and start the season as you say in the final paragraph with Januzaj as 2nd option on the right, Wilson 2/3rd option for striker etc etc the subject wouldn't be an issue, it's when muppets want to buy additional superstars that would push youth like Januzaj and Wilson down to 4th/5th choice fringe members of the squad that you start to be concerned with the attitude.
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Januzaj started series of games ahead off players like Mata. He even started again City and Chelsea early on. He didn't take those chances.

The thing is, the demand is higher now fro young players, once you have the chance, you just have to take it.
 
Maybe mitten is right about our academy though, when he did an article about the state of our youth development
 
amolbhatia50k said:
I find threads like this extremely strange.

Firstly, as expected by most sensible posters, we used plenty of young players last season despite our 150 million spending spree and the whole "United Soul Death i.e you sold my Welbeck 2014" nonsense. Why not see us not use young players and then get all worked up.

Secondly, right now the club is in a phase of instability where it is trying to get back to the level it's been for almost 20 years. It's easy to play young players when you have a well oiled winning machine (United) or the expectations of reaching 4th every year which you will do anyway (arsenal). It's harder for today's United which has a pressure to get back to winning ways and show its standing in the game again, and changing its entire playing style completely. It's as if fans want everything at once. Let's have success. Let's have youth. Let's have top players. Let's have all of that while changing from counter attack to possession.

Thirdly, if Januzaj plays like he did 13-14, or any youngster plays like Giggs when he was 18, you think he won't get in? Lvg believes in merit. If a player shows his quality he will play, he has shown it already.
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nail on head
 
Youth development at top clubs has two main purposes as far as I can see.

Obviously ultimately the goal is to produce talent for the first team, but with the stakes and level so high that is incredibly difficult. There is room for less than 30 players in a first team squad, so realistically, to compete there will only ever be very limited space for 'young & learnin'' players. Last year we had McNair, Blackett, Januzai and Wilson all get some game time, contribute and most importantly gain experience to help them develop.

Who of the top 4 gave more youth products a chance last year?

The second aspect is to create a revenue stream, develop players who, while they may never be good enough for the first team, are still capable of having a career in football, either down the leagues or at a lower club, again, who of the top 4 have more players from their youth set ups playing in the PL?

To suggest you don't invest in the first team, purely so you can give youth players playing time, regardless of whether they have proven themselves worthy of a place is romantic, simplistic and total nonsense.

In the last two years we have spent over 50m on players 21 and under, and handed contract extensions to two academy players who are now part of the first team set up (cant recall if McNair or Blackett got new contracts last year?). I'd say in comparison to our rivals we're doing ok.

Serious investment is taking place this summer for a number of reasons, namely lack of investment in the last decade, and you can't lose players like Rio, Vidic, Evra, Giggs, Scholes at the same time and expect to replace them all with academy graduates, unless you get freakishly lucky as we did in '92.

If we've 'lost our soul' the coup de grace was probably spending 24million on an aging, injury prone striker and giving him 250k a week.... it also won us the league of course but I'm guessing many here would be happy to hand back that title and drop down the league so long as we had Will Keane up front.
 
Twigginater said:
Well... We did.
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Key members? All were reliable squad players but the crucial contribution came from the likes of Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra, Carrick, Rooney or Ronaldo (plus the old guard). Put a team consisting of players of Evans or Welbeck quality and they won't win the league, it's pretty clear.

I am sure if Lingard was great we'd not sign Depay. It's just that quality of our young players is probably still not high enough to place them over players we have signed. It's not philosophy, it's simple awareness.
 
Soul shmoul.

This is an emergency. We need trophies! We need to get the winning mentality back! After all of that is done, we cam build on our "soul" or whatever it may be.
 
This is like wiping a teddys arse. The kids played plenty of games last season (and yes maybe due to injuries in part). However imagine that LVG loaned out Hernandez and sold Welbeck to give Wilson a chance. We will be there and there abouts and Wilson, Pereira, Lingard, Blackett and Mcnair have a great opportunity. So this is a load of nonsense. We needed quality and that is being addressed.
 
you can only blood youngsters in a settled first team.

Now that LVG is getting that stability he needs, we may see the likes of Wilson getting more chances.

Its nonsense to think that you just chuck kids in willy nilly in the hope that some of the make it. The reality is that you're doing well if 1 in 10 makes it.

the other thing is, we now live in a world where everything has to be instant gratification.. now! now! now!

You can bet your life if United didnt spend the last 2 summers and invested in youth instead, there would be uproar "owners arent spending money!" etc. They're damned if they do, and damned if they dont
 
datura said:
And Chelsea and City have thrown a lot of money at developing youth. Over the next few years we'll see if it's bearing fruit. Chelsea have the best youth teams in the country at the moment.
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While you could well be right, it's worth noting Chelsea have been ploughing money into their youth system for years. And the few Chelsea fans i know have been telling me they have amazing youngsters coming through for the last 5-6 years. And yet i don't think they have developed one quality player for their first team in all that time.

Time will tell i guess.
 
stevoc said:
While you could well be right, it's worth noting Chelsea have been ploughing money into their youth system for years. And the few Chelsea fans i know have been telling me they have amazing youngsters coming through for the last 5-6 years. And yet i don't think they have developed one quality player for their first team in all that time.

Time will tell i guess.
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I haven't said that there will be academy products in their first team, but they are investing a lot to that end which contradicts people swaying that these sugar daddy clubs have no interest in developing their own players and just buying ready made first teamers.
 
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