Denis' cuff
Full Member
Glazers
Far off the pace in the league. Diminishing reputation in the continent. No effective/decisive plan of improvement this summer.
No this isn't another having a moan thread, I'd like to think the above we can all agree on. anyway.
I am just interested in folks opinion on the question in the thread title:
Who/what do you think is holding the club back?
i.e What is the main contributor to our recent lack of success and loss of club stature?
This! People love to ignore this as a lot of fans are obsessed with big names / big money transfers.As an outsider United's biggest shortcoming appears to be the inability to fill a certain percentage of your roster with smart and relatively cheap transfers. You have got to identify talent at the right time, take a bit of risk and with the right culture you too can have your own version of Gnabry, Kimmich, Coman and Davies for less than 50m €. There is never enough money to fill a core 18 men rotation just with big expensive signings.
You've made poor decisions and haven't had the expertise to deal with those decisions when they've been made. Let's not sit here and pretend that SAF didn't make poor decisions either. Of course he did. But he and the team around him was capable of rectifying them when they were made and finding a solution to it. The chopping and changing of managers, the wrong personnel and the wrong decisions have led to you struggling to get to the top again.
There does need to be a bit more realism from the fan side of thing too though.
Pretty much, Football is full of mistakes but the best clubs have a way to mitigate them, would you say the same thing about Everton over the last 5 years? You have spent a lot of money and have seemingly made the same type of mistakes without fixing them efficiently?
At United when a mistake is made, it takes an eternity to fix it. I have assumed for a long time that it's due to misplaced pride and a fear to make new mistakes which are two common but useless feelings. United isn't particularly focused on money or maximizing it, so that theory should die and we don't have a particular strategey when it comes to transfers, we also aren't particularly slow in transfers.
Ed Woodward, The Glazers and their collective lack of knowledge in running a successful football club without David Gill and Sir Alex.
It’s simple. 7 years later and still no director of football installed says it all.
Yep, we are in the same position as you in regards to trying to shift 'deadwood'. Either nobody wants to take them or we are having to dramatically reduce the asking price for the players. Walsh, our previous DOF, didn't really seem to have a specific transfer strategy and some of the decisions and transfers we made under him are now trying to be sorted out by Brands. He's no angel but he's fighting a losing battle at times with players that nobody wants to take. He's made some poor signings of his own but I'd say that he at least has some strategy to what he's trying to do at the club. I think he's trying to connect the U23 to the Senior team a lot more than we have been doing in the past 5 years and give a clear pathway to the first team that we used to have. That's one thing you have managed to do right in amongst the many failures.
And while within a season or two, the buck stops with the manager, within a decade, the buck stops with the manager's boss.
We had shit managers who spent a load of money on shit players.
We also have fans who see us improving in Europe/Cups/League position as 'falling reputation'
Please explain Bruno & Harry, neither we’re cheap nor would we be able to sell in a few years for greater value. Prior to that Mata & Matic, I don’t see the theme you do...
back on thread, the owners, they have the final say in everything, so not challenging for major honours since SAF left is on them.
Far off the pace in the league. Diminishing reputation in the continent. No effective/decisive plan of improvement this summer.
No this isn't another having a moan thread, I'd like to think the above we can all agree on. anyway.
I am just interested in folks opinion on the question in the thread title:
Who/what do you think is holding the club back?
i.e What is the main contributor to our recent lack of success and loss of club stature?
Do fans make footballing decisions for the club?
Did the fans decide to pay DDG the money he is on?
Did the fans decide that we should spend money on Sanchez?
Did the fans decide that Perreira, Jones to get a contract?