Would you prefer taking slow approach in transfer window or an massive overhaul of our squad?

Immediate improvement.

A couple of proven World Class players, who fit directly into the system, and a couple of lesser knowns to compliment what’s left.

Hopefully aggressive and hard working. I just want to see a completely different kind of football from United now.
 
RoyH1 said:
The question is, do you trust the Woodward&Ole combo to do a massive overhaul of the squad? What if they spend 200,300 million in net spend and then only a year or two later we get a new manager who wants his own players?
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No, I do not trust Ed. He's spent over $1 billion on hot garbage over the past 6 years.

sparx99 said:
You can use the next three windows to change 10-12 . 5 this summer. 2 in January and 5 the following summer.

However, there is that statistic somewhere (I forget) that said roughly 20% of transfers are considered ‘successful’. Where we need to be committed is being quick to act when one of our next 4-5 signings don’t work out.

This summer Bailly and Fred would be good examples of players who seem to have potential but just haven’t kicked on. We should move at least one of them on while we can get a good fee otherwise we would struggle to move them later. We did well in this regard with the sales of Memphis and Schneiderlin.
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This is Ed we are talking about. It will be impossible for him to do 10 deals in, 10 deals out in 1 summer. So I agree-- the best we can hope for is 4/5 in, 4/5 out this summer. 1/2 more in and out in January, and a few more ins and outs the following summer. My preference of course being a DoF in, and Ed out.
 
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Bwuk said:
Big overhaul.

I don’t think we can afford a slow overhaul. The teams outside the top 6 aren’t as far off us as id like them to be.

A couple of good signings and Wolves would finish ahead of this United side.
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true, if it's in those console games. Too bad this is real life where you cannot simply buy full team consisted of players who played on different style, approach, speed, pressure, physical aspect of the game etc, language, climate and so on.

Or maybe we should buy 20+ players of Ajax, they played together before. And bring full set of management too. Hmm sounds brilliant idea
 
I forgot to mention finantial fairplay regulation which will make us only able to buy 3-5 max depends on the players value. So if full overhaul, I'm afraid that we cannot afford 20+ ajax players. Maybe we can send inquiry to Watford or Wolves for the whole squad. They fight better than us against top6 thought
 
I know that people loath his "motivational poster" comments, but I think that something that Brendan Rodgers said was apt - being a manager is like building a plane whilst it's flying. I think this is something that's very striking about this Man Utd team at the moment. Incremental change may normally be the most sensible action, but the problem is that the kind of player that you'd want to bring in, and the expectations of the fans means that the majority aren't going to be satisfied with a few years of disappointment for a longer growth so even incremental has to take the club forwards. In addition, you run into the problem that players that COULD form the basis of the future team become prey for more successful teams if you aren't successful. And that even assumes you can bring in top caliber of players with relatively little short term ambition.

The counter to that is a massive change is staggeringly expensive. If you want 8-9 first teamers to challenge at the top, you're probably needing something in the region of half a billion pounds in one window, and still have to get them to gel as a team. This seems impractical and puts insane pressure on the manager and players.

It's also interesting how different teams have done it. When City first started their build, they went and got marquee players to show they were serious, or players that could just take the next step which would unlock access to the next tier of quality. Liverpool went and tried to fix one are of the pitch (the attack), then looked to the defence, and then the midfield. Spurs seemed to focus on getting quality players that weren't the flavour of the month yet were still high quality. However, in the past every type of approach seems to have failed or worked.

It feels like some sort of incremental approach is required. Given the strength of the majority of the league, attack first seems the best priority to me. Putting teams under pressure takes a lot of attention away from your own defence.

An incremental approach also seems to give more possibilities of getting the kind of player that makes the rest of the world (or the members of the team you want to keep) sit up and take notice, and focusing the budget on a smaller number of players also means you can hopefully get exactly what you want, as opposed to maybe having to take more second choices. Doesn't stop you from also acquiring a few extra squad players, but I'm assuming the discussion is more about focusing upon a few top tier talents as opposed to more second tier ones.
 
Pogba
De Gea
Shaw
Lindelof
Rashford, Dalot and Martial for the potential only
Smalling as a squad player
The rest can go








So, yes, a massive overhaul
 
I don't think its about slow approach or massive overhaul. It's more about buying promise and potential or big names at their prime. Currently, I would say that we pretty much need a player at every position on the pitch bar the GK. Maybe if we are to compete for the top honours, its unilkely that apart from Dave, Lindelof, Pogba, Rashford and maybe Shaw and Martial, none of these players will feature heavily in our side.
This brings us to the fact that to actually dominate the league and CL, we're atleast 7-8 players short in starting XI and maybe 3-4 more on bench. Assuming we go be 4 in 4 out season over season, our rebuild will take 3-4 years (I'm assming there would be youngsters coming in but at the same time, some of our transfers may not work out or players decide to leave as well). If I know that I'm 3-4 seasons from competing as a serious unit in CL or becoming a 90 point side in PL, I'd prefer to buy just the youth players. These players are continually improving and these players' reaching their peak coincides with us winning trophies.
For example we buy a 28 yo MF. The player may be WC, but he wont be having great players around him and by the time we have a quality player at each position, this player might no longer be WC and now we're looking at replacing him. This process will end up with us in an infinite sort of a loop where we are always replacing our players and wont end up with us having a spell of domination across EU
 
The slow approach just doesn't exist at big clubs, Ole needs to be as ruthless as he is allowed to be to give himself any chance of keeping his job.
 
I think a biggish overhaul. This wont happen, but I would get rid of Jones Rojo Darmian Valencia (gone) Herrera (gone) Mata Pereira Sanchez Pogba Lukaku (why keep players who dont want to play for you). Bring in a CD RB DM CM RW ST. Promote Tuanzebe Garner Greenwood. Could have added more to leave but wouldnt happen. Give Rashford Martial Lingard Fred Bailly Shaw another 12 months to improve or ship out next seasons end. We are Man Utd and shouldnt settle for mediocrity
 
Wumminator said:
A few months ago when I went to the PSG game I realised how simple this whole thing was. In the first half they were very defensive. They doubled up on Rashford and Martial.

When Martial went off we ended up with Mata and Sanchez on the wings. They were abysmal. The players didn’t need to double up, they sent the full backs up and they were attacking.

When I last went Rashford was double marked. He was our danger man. They LET our right hand side have the pitch. They knew there was no danger.

If we add a threat from our midfield and the right hand side, Martial and a rashford look ten times better. If we don’t have to worry about the counter and quick losses in midfield, Smalling is ten times better. If our left winger had more freedom, Shaw becomes ten times better.

We are not far away. Three genuinely class first team players and we look like challengers again.
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That's a fair point tbh, you often see the oppo letting us play where they know we will cause no harm and focusing on where we could. Being so one-dimensional and not working all channels makes it way too easy for them.

You actually don't need a massive overhaul to change that. Attitude though is a different issue.
 
antohan said:
That's a fair point tbh, you often see the oppo letting us play where they know we will cause no harm and focusing on where we could. Being so one-dimensional and not working all channels makes it way too easy for them.

You actually don't need a massive overhaul to change that. Attitude though is a different issue.
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People sometimes think our players are lazy. They are, but I sometimes see why. You stop Martial, Pogba and Rashford you stop our attack. You can give Mata, Sanchez and others keys to pitch and they aren’t hurting you.
 
Well, OGS is not playing football manager. Let’s take it slowly and wisely. I for me dont want to see millions spent on future flops. Let’s be realistic; we are far from the likes of city and liverpool (hate to say this ). We need smart signings. Who from the world class players actually delivered? None! Maybe zlatan, that’s it! I dont want to see an overhaul, it will take 2-3-4 transfer windows to clean this mess
 
Raees said:
Chelsea under Roman and City under Sheikhs proves that big changes can lead to success. Liverpool also have a vastly different side to the one which played under Rodgers for instance.

So don’t buy this slow ass approach.
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Agreed.
The problem is that Woodward is aiming for top 4. His way of thinking is that if he spends say £70M this window, then we can make up those 5 or so points that would've got us into top 4.
Last Summer, we were primed to fight for 1st place, but Woodward would've run through the calculations knowing that the spending necessary to take us from 2nd to 1st just wasn't worth the extra income that winning the league would've generated.
The only reason Woodie would spend big this Summer is if a Galactico becomes available, who he can market to make us money AND who will have a high sell-on value.

The people on this forum are thinking like football supporters.
Our DoF (Mr Woodward) is thinking like a businessman.
Jose and LVG found this out and Jose, at least, wanted out in his 3rd year.

What would I like?
The squad gutted and all the players who were given contract extensions this season - all sold, Shaw excepted.
The purchase of 1 Galactico in defence, 1 in midfield and 1 in attack. The remaining positions will be taken up by players valued at around £50-70M and also our academy players.
Ole to be given 18 months to prove that he is good enough to work with an elite level squad. If it becomes clear before then that he is out of his depth (like Moyes was), then he should be replaced ruthlessly and a new manager brought in, with the understanding that he too will be fired, if he fails to win trophies with our elite level squad.
By having a poor squad, the manager and the players are getting off scott-free. Mediocrity is now being accepted because everybody accepts that our squad is junk.

In reality, this is what will happen:

united for life said:
Well, OGS is not playing football manager. Let’s take it slowly and wisely.
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Massive overhaul needed. Why would anyone want to label it a 3,5, 10 year fix?

We have the resources to do it and there are so many who have been stealing a living here for years. I hope we go all out to turn our fortunes around. Let’s not forget everyone else will be strengthening too.

Please, dear god, let Jones, Young, Darmian, Rojo, Mata, Sanchez, be moved along and replace them with youth players. We then need 4/5 players who will walk into the first team.

Let’s not write off our fortunes competitively for years to come. When we start to get things right, things will fall into place.
 
There is zero chance of us landing any top players who would immediately improve things this Summer. Zero. Trying to go down that route leads to players like Bale, top players who are either past it, out of favour or out of fitness. Maybe the one exception is Dybala, but I'd only be happy with that signing if it doesnt hamper us in recruitment across the rest of the squad. The only other scenario where we have to buy ready-made at a huge price is if De Gea leaves.

What we have to do is a mix of what Poch did at Spurs and what Klopp did at Liverpool: Move out the deadwood and the players with shit attitudes. Then we have to sign or promote hungry players who are a good fit to whatever system it is we plan on using, and who fit into Ole's personal philosophy as well, which by the sounds of it is pretty similar to Klopp and Poch.
 
I'll play along with the massive overhaul, which will take two years...even if I am completely fine (personal preference) with the slow, calculated approach.

Goodbye Summer 2019: Defenders (4 - Bailly, Rojo, Darmian, Valencia) / Midfield (2 - Herrera, Pereira) / Forwards - (2 - Lukaku, Martial) = 8
Hello Summer 2019: Defenders (3 - New RB, New CB, promote Tuanzebe) / Midfield (3 - New CM, New CM, promote Gomes) / Forwards (3 - New CF, promote Greenwood, promote Chong) = 9

Goodbye Summer 2020: GK (2 - DDG, Romero) / Defenders (2 - Either Jones or Smalling, Young) / Midfield (2 - Matic, Mata) / Forwards - (1 - Sanchez) = 7
Hello Summer 2020: GK (2 - promote Henderson to #1, New #2) / Defenders (2 - New LB, New CB) / Midfield (2 - New CM, New CM) / Forwards (1 - New wide forward) = 7

Pretty sure I missed a couple players, but United cannot ship out all of the experienced players. Some need to stay to preserve some balance. It's unlikely bona-fide class players will come into the squad. Need some seasoned, quality pros who can overachieve a little bit in the right setup, whatever that maybe under Ole and staff.

It would be interesting to ship off Pogba and reinvest that revenue plus 50 million quid on one or two world class/potential class forwards and go with a functional midfield 3 of Fred, McTominay and another ball winner/high press player.

The attacking 3 players would be 3 across the line or 2 up front with a #10 behind them who could float into midfield to help create a number overload then release into attack.
 
i favour a massive overhaul with a long term considered approach.

4-5 players simply isn’t enough as it’s not a case of remove a player from the first team & use him as a squad player.

mentally the squad is in pieces, a lot of players need a fresh start as does the club.

i hate the line, “you can’t sign ??? players in one window”, why not!? the club needs change & if the players are available we should buy them at the first opportunity.

all this said, i don’t expect immediate results which is what i think will continue to be our downfall.
 
Sell/release/buy out the 17/18 players in the squad that are not suited to a high pressing and possessionbased approach over the next two seasons. Bring in Koulibaly, a number of young, but experienced players ready to take the next step suited to high press and possession over the next two windows(Ake, Barella, Sancho, Felix, Tonali, Godfrey etc). If OGS not able to implement this playstyle over the next season or improve the players, sack him. Get a manager able to improve/develope players and play high press and possessionbased football (Poch, or some of the new up and coming managers).
 
So the OP went well then :lol:

I’m not so sure I’ve seen such a unanimous rejection since Wummy suggested Zlatan wouldn’t score more than 7 goals in the Premier League.
 
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sunama said:
Agreed.
The problem is that Woodward is aiming for top 4. His way of thinking is that if he spends say £70M this window, then we can make up those 5 or so points that would've got us into top 4.
Last Summer, we were primed to fight for 1st place, but Woodward would've run through the calculations knowing that the spending necessary to take us from 2nd to 1st just wasn't worth the extra income that winning the league would've generated.
The only reason Woodie would spend big this Summer is if a Galactico becomes available, who he can market to make us money AND who will have a high sell-on value.

The people on this forum are thinking like football supporters.
Our DoF (Mr Woodward) is thinking like a businessman.
Jose and LVG found this out and Jose, at least, wanted out in his 3rd year.

What would I like?
The squad gutted and all the players who were given contract extensions this season - all sold, Shaw excepted.
The purchase of 1 Galactico in defence, 1 in midfield and 1 in attack. The remaining positions will be taken up by players valued at around £50-70M and also our academy players.
Ole to be given 18 months to prove that he is good enough to work with an elite level squad. If it becomes clear before then that he is out of his depth (like Moyes was), then he should be replaced ruthlessly and a new manager brought in, with the understanding that he too will be fired, if he fails to win trophies with our elite level squad.
By having a poor squad, the manager and the players are getting off scott-free. Mediocrity is now being accepted because everybody accepts that our squad is junk.

In reality, this is what will happen:
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If he’s thinking like a business man then why offer big wages to shit players? Keep renewing their contact or buying over the hill players on big money? Worse the team plays the less growth on the football pitch (there will be growth but it will be hamstrung to some degree).
 
What the club should be doing is outlining plans the next 3 transfer windows.

Players like Sancho might be in the United’s plans, but it’s not necessarily the right time for the club or player to be recruited this summer...

But still contacts can be made and the process started for next summer.
 
R'hllor said:
Already said it few times, burns this squad to ground, few players might survive thats about it. Dont care about "you cant do this in one transfer window", we pull 5 out and 5 in, they will be infested in few months time and we are back to scratching our heads talking about deadwood. I wouldnt care even if we are 10th next season, majority of those rotten fecks dont deserve the money they earn. Which usually i wouldnt care about that much because of its not our money so its either players or owners but for some fecked up reason, watching these fecks trying to play this game called football and thinking about them picking up their wages next day, i feel like being robbed personally.
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:lol: It's normal. That's because you care about the Club and have a set of standard.
 
settembrini said:
Big overhaul. City finished 3rd in Guardiola's first season, 15th points behind Chelsea. They said that's not good enough, booted out 12+ senior players and signed six. Then they won the league by 19 points.

Obviously we can't do the exact same thing. City had the lure of CL football and working with Guardiola to attract top players and Begiristain to get the deals sorted. We have the Europa league, Solskjaer and Ed Woodward.

However the principles of what they did still apply.

1. They were ruthless. They didn't just chop the deadwood back a bit, they had a giant great bonfire. At United the same players fail season after season and nothing happens. Who is the City equivalent of Jones? They don't have one. They bought Rodwell the summer after we bought Jones, two years later they decided he was unreliable in terms of fitness and performance and they got rid. Five years after that and not only do we still have Jones on our books but have extended his contract until 2023. Now Jones is the worst example of United acting as a charity for millionaire footballers but he's from alone. Our squad is absolutely packed with players who aren't good enough and need kicking out the club.

2. Their signings were smart. They didn't buy players because it would generate social media buzz (Sanchez) or because it was an old mate of their managers from a previous club (Fellaini, Schweinsteiger, Matic). They bought players for their weak positions (Ederson and three new full backs) and players who slotted into Guardiola's system (Laporte and Bernardo Silva). This isn't rocket science, it's common sense and we can do the same thing. We know what are our weakest positions are (left sided CB, right back, right wing) and we know that Solskjaer wants athletic players (power and pace) and hard workers.

Do both of the above and I see no reason why our current deplorable state won't improve. Or we could just carry on down the same path we've been on ever since Ferguson retired and have basically the same squad next season plus Gareth Bale on £500k a week.
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Top post. I especially liked your point about ruthlessness.
 
3 main goals should be:
1) Get rid of most of the "not good enough".
2) Address the most critical problems on field and outside of it, like wages.
3) Replace the profitable, "doesn't wanna be here" players in a way that the squad doesn't get worse.

1 is the most obvious.

2 could be sending Sánchez on loan, removing the wage issue from the squad and use that money to give a better deal to De Gea.

3 basically consists in squeezing Real Madrid. It could be swapping Pogba for a good midfielder (Modric, Kroos, Isco come to mind) plus enough money to get another good one (Eriksen, SMS). To make it 2+3 the cherry on top would be to get a good deal in a loan on an attacker like Benzema, Bale or Asensio, making up for Sánchez departure. The same Pogba logic somehow could be applied for the Herrera deal too.
 
I'd love to see 10 out. 5-6 in. Promote youth.
 
Big overhaul. I get that potentially it could be disruptive, but in our case I don't think it will. If you look at the stats for our squad this season only 13 players have played more than half the games. These include Matic and Young. There are 5 or 6 senior players who have contributed next to nothing.

These 5 or 6 senior players were meant to be the guys pushing the first 11 for a starting spot, keeping our team competitive but they failed miserably. They provided no value to our season. If they had not existed we'd have probably been in the same position. To replace them (either with youth, squad players or even first team players), would only stand to improve us.

https://www.whoscored.com/Teams/32/Show/England-Manchester-United

Just by appearances... These senior players made less than 20 appearances in the league for us.

Sanchez
Fred
Jones
Bailly
Rojo
Periera
Darmian
Valencia

(McTomminay and Dalot too, but they're youngsters in my books).

Which one would we miss?
 
There can be big changes but in a way that looks towards the long term. Sign the young players who will fit a system but accept that results won't be immediate. The serial losers need to go. We will practically be starting with a new system next season so it's a good time to get fresh players in.
 
All or nothing. I rarely prefer the slow approach when things are in deep shit like this.
 
A fecking big quick one, we’re already behind so many big spending/winning clubs we cannot afford to take our time unfortunately. Times have changed and we have to move with them quickly or we’ll fall even further behind than we already are.
 
I agree with a lot of what's been said already. Massive overhaul is required, and needs to happen the minute the season ends.

I'm not fussed about what's coming in, I'm more concerned about removing the crap from the list.

A fresh start is never a bad thing.
 
There needs to be a big change. No point buying/promoting promising players but having them learn from and play together with a bunch of players who are not good enough or have terrible attitudes.
 
I want a big overhaul of players, but I'm not expecting instant success. I'd wait if the club shows signs of fixing the blatant issues with this squad, and we see slow but sure improvement on the pitch. As in at this point I just want to trust the club again, and believe that they want to give the name the respect it deserves.
 
A big overhaul need not necessarily be a short term fix. You can make a large number of changes whilst ensuring the additions are signings with a long term vision.
 
Normally I'd agree that we should go for only 4 or 5 (some for the first team, some for young squad players to build into first teamers later), but we're in a very bad situation at the moment unfortunately. Because of mismanagement and poor transfers our squad is a mismatch of players that suit different styles of football and many of them simply aren't good enough. And unfortunately two of the players that are good enough (Pogba and Herrera) are likely to leave.

So not only do we need to do the normal upgrade of first team positions, we also need to replace a couple of other first teamers who are leaving, and on top of that we also need to rebuild our squad players as far too many of our squad players simply are not good enough to provide what we need our squad players to provide.

At the end of it I don't expect to be challenging for the title next season. I expect an improvement of position, but more importantly I expect an improvement of style. And by that I don't mean just an improvement for us fans to watch, but also to get us into a position where we have a clear system and style that we can continue building towards going forward.
 
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