You mean like Rashford, Sancho, Lingard, Henderson, Shaw, Maguire, Mount, McTominay, Greenwood?
Sure our decline has been in not signing Emerging British Talent, and definitely not to do with with overpaying for the wrong players.
We should sign players based on their ability to match the system laid out by the manager, and they should be recruited based on talent and adaptability to what we are trying to do regardless of Nationality.
Five of those players came through the academy, Shaw but for his injuries would have been our best signing in the last 10 years, Mount, we should have never been signed just like we should never have signed Wilfred Zaha and Maguire was ok to decent for two years, now go back to Rio, Rooney, Cole, Keane, Ince, Pallister, Irwin, Bruce, Sharpe.
Sir Alex made a few mistakes but he was far more interested in the players character as well as his football ability! He believed that English needed to be spoken by the team, even though he spoke a little French, he wasn’t a bigot, far from it, he just believed the team was playing in EPL and needed to understand each other, it’s why he bought so many north Europeans from Norway, Holland they always spoke great English and the French players he used for flair also spoke great English.
Does Manuel Ugarte or Casemiro even speak English? Yet fans expect them to drive the engine of the team? It’s important it’s why we recruited so many Dutch and Scandinavian players in the past twenty years. Rhodri is the driving force of City, without him their useless, his English is exemplary just like Bruno’s but one is a true leader and the other is not!
Fergie would never have tolerated the Lingard/Rashford/Sancho/Pogba rubbish and for the record the team that easily beat us on Saturday started with 5 native speaking English players and 6 on the bench.
Henderson, Gheui, Hughes, Richard’s, Mitchell and on their bench ; Eze, Clyne, Wharton, Deveney, Nketiah Turner.
I’m not being a bigot, I’m trying to explain that a lot of PL squads have raided the best young British/American/Australian/NZ players as a core maybe 10 to 12 in their squad who have come up through the English/British youth system and then added to that core group, your right we should sign players based on their ability to adapt to the managers system but let me give you an example of why buying the majority of players from outside the PL does not work.
If we could find a young Angel Di Maria or Alexis Sanches in their pomp right now, everyone on paper would be saying we need to get both of these players to play inside 10’s and yet we both know that neither player could settle in Manchester and only came for the money, now on the flip side if you could recruit a young Cavani or Zlatan both have the mental fortitude to play and dominate for a club like Man United so yes recruit Elite, not young players. Maybe we should buy Mkhitaryan or S Kagawa would fit perfectly into a 3421 system, they might but not in a high intensity, highly physical PL!
Elite players from Europe like Ederson from Atlanta or Gykores from Sporting but mix that with a majority of very good young British players like Tyler Dibbling, Jared Branthwaite, Jobe Bellingham, Morgan Gibbs White, Chris Rigg. These young British players are used to the intensity and physicality of the English game.
We’ve lost our identity!
when the majority of the squad was homegrown mixed with 1/3 of the squad being Outstanding World talent, United under Fergie had the balance right and had the dominant role models and leaders in the dressing room.
Today three quarter of our squad are not homegrown and one quarter are but they are either not good enough or always injured, look at the team on Saturday and the bench, it’s basically the blind leading the blind!
For the record we started with 2 British players Maguire(Nearing the end of his career!) and Mainoo (Just starting out on his career, being asked to play a role he’s never played before!) and then we had Toby Collyer and Ely Harrison on the bench.
Four players from a matchday squad of 20, we had two goalkeepers on the bench, two Defensive Midfielders, two Centre backs at home to palace and people want to give Amorim a pass, he could easily have promoted S Mather, Moorehouse, Mussa, Ogunnye, Scallion, Chido to give the squad some pace and youthful attacking options.
For the record the under 21’s are actually playing well, in 4th place and have a game in hand to go 3rd and have an outside chance of wining that league even with a very good city and Fulham side above them. They’ve won 5 of their last 6 PL2 games and although they are struggling in Europe, a lot of the Title winning under 18 squad from last year are playing really well for the U21’s. Yet none have been given a chance?
We’ve lost our way, we no longer play Attack, Attack and Attack football but sideways crab like football with very little penetration and very little excitement?
