We pay some of the best wages in World football, yet we have an average team.

The Oracle

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Today is the result of what has been the biggest problem at Manchester United for far too long...

We pay some of the best wages in World football for average players. We extend contracts of players that are average. If a player wants to stay here for the rest of their career and not even play any matches, we will let them - I mean which other team in World football would have kept Phil Jones for this long on £75,000 a week? The answer is no-one.

Let's be honest, why did Ronaldo come back last season? He came back for a massive pay day at the tail end of his career. He could have come back at any point, but decided to come back after his best years were behind him.

We are a joke of a club in the way that we are run.

Any footballer that is serious about winning trophies will not come to Manchester United. Any footballer that wants a payday WILL come to Manchester United. That is the harsh reality.

Just look at the players on the pitch today. Some of the highest paid players in World football... yet it is a team of average players.

We have been run so badly for far too long, and renewed contracts far too many times when the player should have been moved on.

It's going to take a long time to reverse the incompetence that has been driving through our club for years.

Just look at every position on the pitch, and ask yourself do we have the best in class in that position? I will save you time, the answer is no. We don't even have the best in class in the league.

Now look at every position on the pitch, and ask yourself do we pay some of the highest wages in the league to the players in those positions? I will save you time again, the answer is yes we do. In fact we pay some of the highest wages in World football to the players in those positions.

Highest wages and we haven't even got the best in class in our own league.

We are a shambles of a football club.
 
The board hasn't realised the damage they are doing to the club in terms of credibility. We are becoming a meme club due to the players we have and how we are run, but their short-sighted analysis is probably that since we are doing good in Instagram we are fine.

I insist: Rashford, Shaw, Maguire, Bailly, AWB, Jones, DDG, Martial should have already left, even for free. Average players with questionable attitudes and ridiculously high wages. As long as we keep those it means our mentality is still stuck to achieving top four every now and then. It is better to make a reboot and finish 12th than constantly underachieve and overpay. It's more about sending a message than the results of a year.
 
And yet there's another thread saying we should pay whatever to get FDJ done and that the club is 'haggling over a few million' and that THAT is why we are badly run. The reality is always somewhere in between.

We have a squad built for counter attacking football. We need to replace some players that have left (pogba because we would not pay him the wages he wanted note) and we have to replace some older players like matic and cavani, and some that are out of our control like greenwood. We also need to add players that are more suited to possession football.

The issue with the way the club is run is the lack of continuity in style. We went from LVG who was possession oriented to mou and ole who were counter attack oriented and back to possession now.

None of that is an excuse for getting beaten by Brighton.
 
The wages are linked to transfer fees. You can't sign a £50m player and then not pay them the salary of one.
 
I guessed United has obligations to all their sponsors. They need to have a successful team in the shortest time in which they cannot. The next best thing they could do is to retain some prominent names that has done their stuff previously or in other leagues.
If United does not have such obligation and expectation on them, they could have started afresh with young players who will grow and improve.
Heard news that they are going to get Arnautovic who is 33 years old. Why not play Charlie Mcneil who is about same age with Sesko which they are claimed to be challenging for his signature? Bring him into the first team and let him learn from Ronaldo as much as he can. Start playing James Garner instead of waiting for De Jong. Play Garnacho instead of Sancho who isn't brave enough for premier league. Bruno Fernandez seems to loose the ball many more times than before signing his new contract and should be dropped for Iqbal. Charlie Savage seems tough enough to start in a midfield that is too lazy and not robust enough.
Alex Ferguson had started with many young players and made them successful. Let this be a season of rebuild and fresh start from scratch. I believe the youngsters will run themselves into the ground when given the chance. Better to have players who will fight and work for the team than give up easily.
 
Absolutely spot on.

We have let standards drop to a point where players look at this as a peace posting. A place where they can draw enormous salaries with little to show for it. Years of neglect and lack of accountability has resulted in this situation.

The sad part is that there is no easy solution. You have to get back to the drawing board. Replace our roster of overpaid underachievers with young and hungry players. It may take a while to get back to where we were but that’s the right way to rebuild. Getting the best coach in the world and buying his 2nd and 3rd choice players to back him will only repeat the cycle.
 
We promote the head of marketing to run the club, and he makes marketing decisions. Renew the contract, it looks great on the books, the cost per year for his sign on fee looks great. Amortization is better than actually riding yourself of an expensive player who doesn’t play to these people.

Obviously we have to give Arnold and Murtough a chance, but it’s not like they haven’t been at the club for all of these disasters. Wouldn’t it be better to being in someone from outside?

They try it on a temporary basis, and I expect Ralf made it very obvious that if the club was run properly, none of them would be any part of it, as they don’t have the requisite ability. That’s not gonna fly, no one wants to fire themselves.

Meanwhile if you actually like to watch good football, better find another club to follow, and watch United like taking medicine.
 
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led_scholes said:
The board hasn't realised the damage they are doing to the club in terms of credibility. We are becoming a meme club due to the players we have and how we are run, but their short-sighted analysis is probably that since we are doing good in Instagram we are fine.

I insist: Rashford, Shaw, Maguire, Bailly, AWB, Jones, DDG, Martial should have already left, even for free. Average players with questionable attitudes and ridiculously high wages. As long as we keep those it means our mentality is still stuck to achieving top four every now and then. It is better to make a reboot and finish 12th than constantly underachieve and overpay. It's more about sending a message than the results of a year.
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They think that's fine because ManUtd loss brings views, everyone can run their shop, memers, streamers, journos, even some agents and players get their contract renewed because it's easy to link a player to us and get things moving. All this keeps us in the news and trending on twitter, all for the wrong reasons though.
 
I very much doubt our wage bill is that high right now, certainly not “some of the best wages in football”.

We’ve just let Pogba, Cavani, Lingard, Mata, Matic and Periera go plus recouped 100% of Telles wages.

On top of that we’ve just reduced our wage bill by 25% while only adding 3 players of reasonable profile.

Our wage bill will be considerably lower than the likes of City and Liverpool.

Take Ronaldo out of the equation and our wage bill would be surprisingly average.
 
The Oracle said:
Today is the result of what has been the biggest problem at Manchester United for far too long...

We pay some of the best wages in World football for average players. We extend contracts of players that are average. If a player wants to stay here for the rest of their career and not even play any matches, we will let them - I mean which other team in World football would have kept Phil Jones for this long on £75,000 a week? The answer is no-one.

Let's be honest, why did Ronaldo come back last season? He came back for a massive pay day at the tail end of his career. He could have come back at any point, but decided to come back after his best years were behind him.

We are a joke of a club in the way that we are run.

Any footballer that is serious about winning trophies will not come to Manchester United. Any footballer that wants a payday WILL come to Manchester United. That is the harsh reality.

Just look at the players on the pitch today. Some of the highest paid players in World football... yet it is a team of average players.

We have been run so badly for far too long, and renewed contracts far too many times when the player should have been moved on.

It's going to take a long time to reverse the incompetence that has been driving through our club for years.

Just look at every position on the pitch, and ask yourself do we have the best in class in that position? I will save you time, the answer is no. We don't even have the best in class in the league.

Now look at every position on the pitch, and ask yourself do we pay some of the highest wages in the league to the players in those positions? I will save you time again, the answer is yes we do. In fact we pay some of the highest wages in World football to the players in those positions.

Highest wages and we haven't even got the best in class in our own league.

We are a shambles of a football club.
Click to expand...
So have you just realised that or are you new to the world of football?
 
First thing the board should do is rip up Rashford 200k contract and either 1) set an example for other players by making him sign a new contract for 75k a week or 2) let that lazy ass overhyped footballer go!!

That would be a great example of setting the tone right!!
 
Ive said before we should have a tier structure where the basic wage at the top should be xxx k and to earn more goes on team and individual performances. That way if players were getting more would mean we were being successful.
That way the 30 odd year olds that want to come for a final big payday and we want to sign, would only get the same as everyone else and not hundred grand or more than anyone else in some cases
 
It's because as soon as they have a decent (not good or great) then we shower them with cash - Rashford, Martial and Williams were the result of Woodward, but lasts years extension of Fernandes shows Murtough is no different to Woodward, we had Fernandes on a contract until he was 31/32, yet we decided to double his wages during his worst period for us, probably with the hope the doubled salawould get him to perform to a respectable level again.

If a player like Fernandes wanted a pay rise or leave, tell him to leave, he'd have been easier to sell on £120k a week than his current £250k a week.

We're running by greedy cnuts who think money is the be all and end all, so of course they think if they pay the best then players will have to be the best, how can they not?
 
I actually like what Barcelona have done with making players take lower wages.

I would like that to happen at United.
 
Unfortunately once you create that model it is very very hard to get away from it. Take us for example, we were paying vastly overinflated wages to people which say Delph, Gomes, Gylfi, Mina etc. all being paid c. 100k and meaning that we were 6th or 7th in terms of wages paid within the whole league but our league position was nowhere near that. It's a massive fecking cycle because you can't get rid of the players as nobody wants to pay their wages and you can't bring players in without matching big wages as they know what others on your books are on. Usually the result, like us, is waiting for their contract to run down so you can start again but it means that you have to take a couple of years off making any valuable progress in the league or transfer market.

As it stands we are now at our lowest point in years but are trying to make the right moves in the market - solid experienced leaders with a mix of high potential young players in an effort to try and solidify ourselves in the league and from then on being able to make signings that can kick us on. I think the same is happening with yourselves. Eriksen as a solid free signing with a mix of young potential in Malacia and Martinez.
 
It really is a travesty, and the problem is just compounded by our inability to effectively recruit. How can we possibly hope to get rid of the overpaid players, when we are utterly incapable of making a plan to replace them with younger and hungrier players that have the right potential? We are more likely to end up with new overpaid players, than to actually improve. We also need to get rid of our sentimentality regarding academy players. The likes of McTominay and Rashford are given far too many chances on the back of that single factor. In the past, academy players only stayed until they were no longer good enough for the squad - players like Evans, Brown, O'Shea, Butt, etc. actually left when they were surplus to requirements.

At least we got rid of Lingard, Pogba, Matic, Pereira, and Mata over the summer. A step in the right direction. Next up should be Bailly, Jones, AWB, McTominay and Martial. How Phil Jones is still here is completely beyond me - seems to be mostly out of pity.
 
The title is exactly why players don’t leave and sit here for years. They wouldn’t get these wages anywhere else.
 
SilentWitness said:
Unfortunately once you create that model it is very very hard to get away from it. Take us for example, we were paying vastly overinflated wages to people which say Delph, Gomes, Gylfi, Mina etc. all being paid c. 100k and meaning that we were 6th or 7th in terms of wages paid within the whole league but our league position was nowhere near that. It's a massive fecking cycle because you can't get rid of the players as nobody wants to pay their wages and you can't bring players in without matching big wages as they know what others on your books are on. Usually the result, like us, is waiting for their contract to run down so you can start again but it means that you have to take a couple of years off making any valuable progress in the league or transfer market.

As it stands we are now at our lowest point in years but are trying to make the right moves in the market - solid experienced leaders with a mix of high potential young players in an effort to try and solidify ourselves in the league and from then on being able to make signings that can kick us on. I think the same is happening with yourselves. Eriksen as a solid free signing with a mix of young potential in Malacia and Martinez.
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It’s a difficult line to walk and can bite both ways. At Brighton we pay lower wages and as a result are always vulnerable to losing our best players.

With both Everton and United I think the problem of high wages would disappear over night if you both fixed your recruitment problem. Both teams have made appalling recruitment decisions in the last few years.
 
The Boy said:
It’s a difficult line to walk and can bite both ways. At Brighton we pay lower wages and as a result are always vulnerable to losing our best players.

With both Everton and United I think the problem of high wages would disappear over night if you both fixed your recruitment problem. Both teams have made appalling recruitment decisions in the last few years.
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As I said, we are trying to fix that now, but the problem was that due to FFP we had to shift high wage players before having manouevrebility in the market again which was a result of the high wage structure. It's a vicious cycle that can't be broken easily.
 
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