We need more players like Dan James

Stig

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We paid £ 16m for Dan James, he played 50 games for us. He did quite well sometimes but clearly wasn't top top grade, we sold him about two years later for £ 25m.

So, we made just under £ 10m on someone who did, no worse than Sancho, and we moved him on when it was clear he wasn't a top player.

A few more little risks like this, and Malacia at about £ 17, from what I have seen, we can't go wrong. I think he was good in the games he has played, if we decide he is not good enough he will increase in value just for being showcased in a few games.

I think we should kiss a few more frogs rather than dumping £ 55+ million pounds into players who, when they get here, don't command a first team place, will have high wages, and we will sell at a loss.
 
Stig said:
We paid £ 16m for Dan James, he played 50 games for us. He did quite well sometimes but clearly wasn't top top grade, we sold him about two years later for £ 25m.

So, we made just under £ 10m on someone who did, no worse than Sancho, and we moved him on when it was clear he wasn't a top player.

A few more little risks like this, and Malacia at about £ 17, from what I have seen, we can't go wrong. I think he was good in the games he has played, if we decide he is not good enough he will increase in value just for being showcased in a few games.

I think we should kiss a few more frogs rather than dumping £ 55+ million pounds into players who, when they get here, don't command a first team place, will have high wages, and we will sell at a loss.
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It depends. When a Casemiro/Varane become available you have to get them in regardless of price.

However, I do agree with your broad point that our scouting needs upgrading, a player like Caicedo would have been a brilliant signing for example.
 
Do we?

It worked out in the specific case of Dan James, because there was one set of mugs out there prepared to help us recoup our money.

We need good footballers, whether they're 15 million or 55 million. I believe we should work to budgets and to the recruitment team and managers preferences. Not simply a case of moneyball or splurging huge amounts. The right players.
 
Somewhat agreed but I think it is impossible for utd to buy quality players on the cheap. We can still buy cheap like we did with James but that is only because he just doesn't have the required quality.

I have been wanting us to quit on over expensive 90+ million players for a long time. It works out fine for Casimero (for now, next season could be another story) but he is the only successful expensive buy we did in seemingly forever.
 
We were just lucky Leeds/Bielsa had a hard on for him. 9/10 we make a loss or break even.

Is he even getting in the Leeds side these days? he was never good enough for us.
 
I see the point your making, but realistically you'd end up having a team reminiscent of hodgsons Liverpool.
 
It still baffles me how we made money on Dan James. One of the more limited footballers we've had at the club for as long as I can remember. Feels like his value increased purely from getting a solid amount of games and proving he wasn't very injury-prone (is he injured now, btw?). That scoring "streak" he went on at the start may have helped a bit too.
 
Stig said:
He came for a trial and we made £10m on him. No harm done. We bought an option and sold it on.
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Well the 'harm' done was all the matches he played where he obviously wasn't good enough.

I see the point you're making, but the other hand is that we don't want to inflate our team with players who aren't of the requisite quality (however cheap they may be).
 
The cost of making £10M profit on Dan James was having him play 74 games for the club. It's too high.

If anything we need more signings like Pellistri. £8m for a 20 year old Uruguayan international is a bargain and he's one we can make profit on despite never actually playing him.
 
And end up with zero titles in the process?

We are not in a position where we can buy promising backups before we have a good enough starting eleven.
 
Adam-Utd said:
We were just lucky Leeds/Bielsa had a hard on for him. 9/10 we make a loss or break even.

Is he even getting in the Leeds side these days? he was never good enough for us.
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He was made surplus to requirements and is out on loan at Fulham for the season.
 
If we make £10m a year on shit players we could afford one great one every decade. Worth thinking about.
 
I think we should start implementing this with our academy: Lingard, Henderson, Janujaj, Williams etc could have brought millions to the club, and the risk is lower for us: the only risk is that they may become amazing and we pay to get them back, a risk we can reduce for certain cases by inserting clauses.

For example, I think Elanga is in this category: we can sell him next summer for a nice amount but we will probably wait few years till his value is close to zero.
 
Their has to be a balance. For every unearthed gem we need top quality around them to take them up a level.
What we should do is bring in a top DoF to find these gems like Kante Mahrez Payet.
 
Based Adnan said:
The cost of making £10M profit on Dan James was having him play 74 games for the club. It's too high.

If anything we need more signings like Pellistri. £8m for a 20 year old Uruguayan international is a bargain and he's one we can make profit on despite never actually playing him.
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This basically.
 
Say what you want about Dan James but no one can convince me he isn't more useful than Elanga.
 
Plant0x84 said:
He just wasn’t. Inconsistent - yeah of course, he was a young player from a lower league team but you can’t say he was ‘shit’ because he had some great performances for us and was a useful squad player. He also worked his arse off and never complained.
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So running a bit is good enough to be a United player these days ? :lol: give me a break
 
Dan James did his job at that period. Maybe under ETH he may have turned out to be a decent player? Who knows?
 
Samid said:
I mean we started a league game with a player like that just yesterday.
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Doesn't mean Elanga is good enough either (although he's barely played lately so he gets the benefit of doubt)

Even Leeds decided he wasn't up to it ffs. Don't you think maybe you're just a sucker for a cheeky chappy?
 
I understand the economics behind this logic however the reality was that the club purchased a player with inadequate quality for the squad and first team. United's model has never been to solely profit from player sales as this is reminiscent of a selling club. There are enough streams of revenue given the size of the club but I agree with the sentiment that more shrewd signings should be made aside well coveted talents. In some regard the clubs pursuit of Bellingham / Haaland before their moves to Dortmund is small evidence of this to a small degree.
 
Bit of a click-baity title but I largely agree.

Have no issue with the club taking £10-£15m punts on players, especially from the championship as theirs a lot of good players in there.

In James we got lucky that we managed to flog him for near £30m but even if we had sold him for £10m-£15m it still would have made the whole thing worthwhile.
 
Plant0x84 said:
He just wasn’t. Inconsistent - yeah of course, he was a young player from a lower league team but you can’t say he was ‘shit’ because he had some great performances for us and was a useful squad player. He also worked his arse off and never complained.
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Working hard and not complaining doesn’t mean you aren’t shit though. He was terrible, essentially just a pace merchant. Just because the boy had a good attitude doesn’t mean we need to praise him though.
 
The head scratcher is why we went for dan james but ignored bowen and Ivan toney who were actually putting up great numbers and showed stand out quality in the championship compared to Dan james who is clearly a poor man's theo walcott.

There is nothing wrong with taking risks on low risk high reward players who show real potential in various leagues around europe/South America that won't cost much in both fee and wages and will be easy to move on if they aren't able to make the step at united
 
I think the lesson with James that we should learn is sometimes you have to just accept a player isn't good enough and it's better to sell them on early and make a profit.

We're so bad at selling players, James is a rare example of us doing it correctly.
 
Adam-Utd said:
Doesn't mean Elanga is good enough either (although he's barely played lately so he gets the benefit of doubt)

Even Leeds decided he wasn't up to it ffs. Don't you think maybe you're just a sucker for a cheeky chappy?
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:lol: Dude I don't care much for Dan James.
 
Djemba-Djemba said:
I think the lesson with James that we should learn is sometimes you have to just accept a player isn't good enough and it's better to sell them on early and make a profit.

We're so bad at selling players, James is a rare example of us doing it correctly.
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James was not good technically but his overall performance with us was not so bad. He was massively important in the way OLE setup against big teams. Sometimes attitude alone makes clubs/voaches stick to certain players. Wes, park.....I personally felt one of the reason we crashed last season was because we lacked a player thst worked hard like James.
 
Hopefully we don’t. The pain of watching useless footballers who run, for 50 games is not worth the 10 million we made. Also signing shite players makes you worse.

We need more Casemiro, Antony, Martinez signings.
 
Adam-Utd said:
We were just lucky Leeds/Bielsa had a hard on for him. 9/10 we make a loss or break even.

Is he even getting in the Leeds side these days? he was never good enough for us.
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That's a tough ask being on loan at Fulham :lol:
 
Andycoleno9 said:
No, we don't. Dan James was shit.
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He wasn't up to it but he wasn't the kind of player that lost us games, like someone like Maguire has done. And as pointed out the club turned a profit on his fee, so all in all it wasn't a bad bit of business.
 
Todd said:
He wasn't up to it but he wasn't the kind of player that lost us games, like someone like Maguire has done. And as pointed out the club turned a profit on his fee, so all in all it wasn't a bad bit of business.
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Maguire is 10x the player Dan James will ever be. You probably think he's shit, fine - but no idea why you've used mental gymnastics to slag him off here.
 
Samid said:
Say what you want about Dan James but no one can convince me he isn't more useful than Elanga.
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Much of a muchness really. They perform the same role in the team - one was a punt from the Championship and the other came through our academy. I imagine Elanga will meet the same fate in the next year or two.
 
I get what OP means, these types of signings have been missing from our business in recent years. Possibly because they’re usually made from a position of strength - you’d sign a James or a chicarito or an Evra but you wouldn’t be relying on them straight away. They’d be introduced gradually, compete for a spot and if they managed to nail down a first team position then happy days. Ferguson was great at this.

Recently though we’ve been scrambling in the market for big names which would take us back to the top - not for the supplementary players to keep us there. Dan James was unlucky in a way, he was on fire for the first month but it got to the point where we were relying on him to win us games. That’s more on us than him.
 
Todd said:
He wasn't up to it but he wasn't the kind of player that lost us games, like someone like Maguire has done. And as pointed out the club turned a profit on his fee, so all in all it wasn't a bad bit of business.
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Maguire cost Manchester United points with his mistakes but im sure that Dan James his horrible finishing and terrible decision making also cost Manchester United points... or at the very least made it harder for Manchester United to get points. Bit unfair comparing a defender to attacker.

Glad he is gone, he just wasnt good enough. Dont care that he works hard and doesnt complain, doesnt make him good enough.
 
I thought that in every game this season as our results improve, our possession improves and our all round play improves….

I just think “you know what this team is lacking, 3 or 4 Dan James”.
 
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