What should be the realistic expectations for 2020-21?

soralapio said:
Chelsea, who were level on points with United last season, and have strengthened SIGNIFICANTLY with top level young talent, "look as strong as United"? In what sense don't they seem quite a lot stronger than United, considering they were just as strong last season and should now be considerably stronger?
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If the new players hit the ground running they'll be close to City and maybe even Liverpool.
 
soralapio said:
He also said "who look as strong as United", which I strongly disagreed with. Read my post again.
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Chelsea have bought half a new team. Doesn't mean they will all gel immediately.

Also....not only will we have Donny and possibly one or two others coming in ourselves.....we will have Bruno all season rather than from just January, We will hopefully have Pogba most of the season and Greenwood is now in the fold and he didn't start last season in the team.

It's not as black and white as you make it out to be. Both Chelsea and United's best 11's are pretty evenly matched I would say.
 
soralapio said:
Chelsea, who were level on points with United last season, and have strengthened SIGNIFICANTLY with top level young talent, "look as strong as United"? In what sense don't they seem quite a lot stronger than United, considering they were just as strong last season and should now be considerably stronger?
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True that Chelsea was even on points with United last year but that was after United played half a season without any competent attacking central midfielder. And, they only got Pogba for the restart. That was the weak link in the team last year. Once United started strengthening their central midfield last year, they outperformed the rest of the league including Chelsea. Chelsea is playing catch up based on performance once United strengthened.

This year central midfield is the strongest part of the team starting with Bruno and Pogba and DVB. United are significantly stronger than the team that played most of last season because of this. Yes Chelsea has improved.. Enough to catch United? United has improved its weakness into a strength. Chelsea's weakness was in defense last year and still is this year. And United presumably have two, hopefully three, additions to make in the transfer market. Of course, maybe Chelsea does too.
 
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Nou_Camp99 said:
Chelsea have bought half a new team. Doesn't mean they will all gel immediately.

Also....not only will we have Donny and possibly one or two others coming in ourselves.....we will have Bruno all season rather than from just January, We will hopefully have Pogba most of the season and Greenwood is now in the fold and he didn't start last season in the team.

It's not as black and white as you make it out to be. Both Chelsea and United's best 11's are pretty evenly matched I would say.
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Look at Everton at the weekend - they appear to be gelling pretty quickly. It is possible. Especially if the players are quality (i.e. Chelsea's signings).

I'd love to be wrong - but like the person you were quoting said - Chelsea have recruited to their first team considerably over the Summer, sadly we haven't.
 
Nou_Camp99 said:
Bollocks. We have spent the 2nd most in that time. That's not a lack of ambition. It's a lack of competency.
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Certainly a lack of intelligence from whom ever is signing these players as well as trying to organise them into a top team for the past 7 years. Ed/Managers are us much to blame I guess, its all interlinked, if one department isnt doing its bit the whole thing wont work with all the best will in the world. We have wasted a LOT of money on dross and our scouting seems vague at best.
 
Coxy said:
Look at Everton at the weekend - they appear to be gelling pretty quickly. It is possible. Especially if the players are quality (i.e. Chelsea's signings).

I'd love to be wrong - but like the person you were quoting said - Chelsea have recruited to their first team considerably over the Summer, sadly we haven't.
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Chelsea's recruitment this summer is to cover this summer and last don't forget. We were never matching them in this window.

However we still have some excellent players ourselves, we have added hopefully another in Donny and we probably won't be done there yet either.

If we don't lose anybody of significance and we buy for example Donny, Reguilon and maybe a CB then we are stronger too. Got to factor in the players we had for so long last season and Bruno only joining end of January too.
 
3 semi finals and a 3rd placed finish was a really good solid season for United, but we must now strive to improve further, and this transfer window has been mostly a damp squib so far.

On the positive side, and its easy to forget with how the window is panning out, but, Bruno for a full season, as well as Pogba & Rashford fully fit, Martial full of confidence, Greenwood in the team, Henderson ready to step in, and Donny will be class I'm sure.
If only we could bring in Sancho together with either Reguillon or Telles.....Wow..!!

I'd really start to believe that we are going places.
 
soralapio said:
Chelsea, who were level on points with United last season, and have strengthened SIGNIFICANTLY with top level young talent, "look as strong as United"? In what sense don't they seem quite a lot stronger than United, considering they were just as strong last season and should now be considerably stronger?
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Chelsea last year had much better depth than us but a worse starting 11 when everyone was fit. Now the starting 11s are pretty close, they're probably built better with players suiting each other more (but not a whole lot in it from a quality perspective), but they blow us out of the water with depth and thats what will show in the end. It'll be a season where depth will be more important than ever, and our lack of depth in the attack and for our fullbacks will come back to haunt us unless we sign a couple of players capable of starting/rotating with the players we have without us dropping a level. Reguilon for left back, and then even someone like Perisic would be fine for the attack as it still means we can rotate all our attackers to keep them fresh. Right now we can't do that.
 
We need a top class CB I would say over a lb or a RB. Then of course a striker. If we get top class players as a CB, DM and a striker we can be in business. Otherwise I don't think so.
Don't forget Arsenal and other teams are stronger too now.
 
We’ll do well if we make top 4, leave the group stages of the CL and reach the semis of a domestic cup.
 
Looking at what teams are doing around us and our current lack of activity. I would say fourth is good with fifth being par.

Trying to compete on four fronts with this squad and the difficulty of Champions League football I think will cause us real issues.

We also have to consider that our most important players (barring Bruno and Maguire) always have extending injury breaks throughout the season.
 
hobbers said:
We're not going to do anything in the transfer market. Board and Woodward don't seem particularly concerned with actually improving at all on last season.

Ole will probably pay the price for that. At the very least he has to keep us in the top four to stay in the job. If things go as badly as they did in the first half of last season he's going to come under tremendous pressure again.
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Don't worry. He can just drop the CL from the get go and focus everything to get top 4.
 
Thinking I'm going to have to lower my expectations for the season ahead. Finishing third last season and securing Champions League football again gave me the expectations of a strong transfer window. So far it doesn't seem to happen. We haven't strengthen the squad as much as I had hoped and we haven't sold any of the "deadwood". I was expecting the club to cut ties with Lingard, Mata, and two defenders of either Smalling, Jones or Rojo.

So at the moment I'm super disappointed. Obviously Covid-19 lurks but Chelsea shows it's possible.

I'll be expecting fourth place but also knowing we could end up somewhere between seventh and fourth. There's lots of dangerous teams that can and will cause us upsets during the season with our current lot. I don't see us challenging a top three whatsoever.

Also expecting a slow start now that we haven't had much of a pre-season and any signings we'll potentially make from now on will have a hard time making an instant impact due to joining in super late.

All in all I'm not very ecstatic. I had hoped for so much more in the transfer window. A few signings in the likes of Evra and Vidić and perhaps a Sancho.
 
Mine are getting lower by the day to be honest. All the optimism after the Leicester game has drained away.

I know theres positives with our starting line up and VdB coming in but I really (stupidly) thought we would have added a certain Dortmund player and being greedy maybe one other signing as well.
 
I’d say 4th and a decent cup run would be a very good season based on the current squad.

We’re going to struggle and slip down the table if we get a few injuries though as we haven’t really improved the quality of the depth of the squad. Apart from Beek.

Fingers crossed for some quality signings.
 
3ed or 4th i think. It depends a lot on injuries because we are very thin up top. If we avoid major injuries, i can see us take the form of after lock down in to the new season.
 
Think I'm gonna have to lower my expectations from the end of last season and say I think we'll only win the league by 15-20 points. No pressure on the cup competitions for Ole though, I'd take the FA Cup or League Cup and a CL Semi.
 
If we only have the addition of VDB and the squad can stay fit for most of the season, then top 4 is about it.
Liverpool , City are in a better position than we are, I think we will be challenging Chelsea, Arsenal and maybe Spurs for 4th.
 
Think it's very hard to predict anything about the season ahead. Who knows if the world won't go into another lockdown, how will fixtures be affected if a club has positive cases of covid? Will fans be allowed back in this season?

So to try and predict this future is absolutely impossible. I'd say all bets are off right now, utd could be champions or finish 12th, such is the unknown of what's ahead.
 
I still believe we could finish top 4. Anything higher is bit unrealistic, to be honest.
 
End in 7th and win the CL. That would be epic. Not realistic though. 3-4th with nothing won is the realistic scenario.
 
United will start very well have a good few months. The fatigue and a couple of injuries will once again expose the dire state of our squad. We'll fade badly from december to March, then have a final push in the last 10 games and scrape 6th place.
 
4th, I reckon. Our starting XI is still comfortably better than the Arsenal/Spurs/Leicester trio behind us. Injuries are the only thing that *should* keep us down with them.
 
PL - 4th
CL - Get out of the group stages
Domestic ups - maybe a semi final ?
 
On the premise that we don't sign anyone else. If we have no major injuries, then 4th. If we have 1-2 injuries to important players, then anywhere from 5-8.
 
Ole will be working miracles to maintain on last season with what he has. Screwed by the board.
 
Zlatans Knee said:
On the premise that we don't sign anyone else. If we have no major injuries, then 4th. If we have 1-2 injuries to important players, then anywhere from 5-8.
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I'd go lower than 5-8.

Our team has looked mentally fragile when they get a run of bad results. Fernandes helped to cure that but we haven't been on a bad run since he came into the team. It will happen at some point next season and I haven't seen enough of our players to convince me that we can dig ourselves out of a bad patch.

Added to that but the clubs outside the "big four" look pretty decent too.

If the wheels fall off our campaign then we could possibly be 10th to lower half of the league
 
We should be winning more than 18 games, losing fewer than 8 games, and scoring more than 66 goals.

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Third place won't be achievable with 66 points again this season. But consistent form would represent progress more so than a higher placed finish in the table.

Baby steps.
 
Liverpool, City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs with the Bale and the full back from Real is going to be better than us. I would say Carlo has proven to be a better manager than Ole so even Everton can be above us.
 
Fourth and a cup run in either the FA Cup or even better the Champions League is the realistic bare minimum, but with every passing day even that bare minimum is looking less and less likely to happen.
 
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