This has to be true. Buy options and obligations would be worthless to buyer and seller if the player could scupper them unilaterally
Like I said the other day, this is what held us back in the summer. Failing to shift anyone other than Bergwijn on a permanent when the for sale list was as long as my arm. The three players mentioned by Dan KP would almost certainly only go out on loan; all were close to doing so in the summer but my gut instinct is that we pulled the plug on those deals once it became clear that messrs Winks, Ndombele, Lo Celso, Reguilon, Doherty, Royal, Sanchez and Lucas would still be employees of THFC when the window shut, QED permanent replacements were hard to sign QED we had to keep a bunch of youngsters around to temporarily fill squad places temporarily vacated by the list above. We showed more ambition than usual in the summer, but not enough imo. January needs to be a huge window for us or there is every chance we miss top 4 and zero chance we win a trophy.
The big question is why Conte blocked loans for Sarr and Gil in the summer, and yet Sarr hasn't played while Gil gets cameos
I agree with your reading of the window in terms of why some younger players were kept around. But others not leaving is not about ambition from the club. It’s about players on long contracts earning wages above their station who won’t take cuts to move somewhere they will actually play. Would you buy them at their wages? Even if we offered a cut price. And would clubs they want to move to even offer permanent deals?
What I meant is the sense that ruthless ambition - which almost no club is foolhardy enough to pursue - is literally terminating contracts and instantly freeing up a space in the squad. A level below that is allowing players to leave on the cheap. A level below that is holding out for a reasonable fee. A level below that is breaking even. And the lowest level of ambition in turns of squad turnover is digging your heels in to make a profit. I believe Levy used to be somewhere between the last two levels. In recent years he has moved up a notch or two, but only seems to be willing to let a player leave for cheap or even for free when there is little resale value anyway (e.g. Sissoko, Hart, Rose). There have been a few occasions where he has sanctioned a hefty loss on younger players (Janssen, NKoudou). But we are yet to see him take a huge hit on a big money signing like Ndombele and Lo Celso. Although counterbalancing that is our lack of knowledge as you say - maybe we literally didn't receive a single concrete off for them that would have tested Levy's ambition and/or appealed to the players themselves.
The club's in a bit of a sticky situation that a small part of me sympathises with even if it's their own doing. Over the last sort of 7ish years, we've changed from a club who had a reputation of being stingy with wages to a club who's got a higher average salary than roughly 90% of Europe (that's an estimate fwiw but I'd imagine it's not far off). Therefore the players we don't want are primarily on wages higher than what other clubs can pay, even though many of the players we don't want aren't even good enough for clubs you'd consider a tier lower than us - financially and competitively. So we're essentially ****ed in multiple ways when it comes to trying to shift players, to the point where terminating contracts may be the "best" solution to free up space but then that does almost nothing to actually help us bring players in as we're a club that needs to partly run on selling to buy, even with improved revenue nowadays. So basically we need to stop buying **** players as well as giving new contracts to existing **** players. Cue new deal for Sessegnon in the next 6-12 months.
It's exactly the situation United have been in for almost a decade now. Poor recruitment and a lack of cohesive vision has led to multiple signings of bog standard players on extortionate wages who are then impossible to get rid of. The difference is that ***GLAZERS OUT*** their owners are happy to sanction £200m spend per year to try to solve the problem the quick way, which is how they're able to have four LBs in their squad and keep hold of Martial and Rashford despite adding Antony and Sancho. We obviously can't do that.
To be honest we've been in that sour spot where we're paying higher wages than most midtable clubs but not as high as the Sky 4 for at least ten years, considering Bassong was on £45k a week ten years ago, and we signed off on some baffling salaries between 2012-13 such as Saha being on £55k a week for half a season or the utterly insane £65k a week for Holtby And the irony there is we could afford to do that, because while we were offering players who could walk into a team expected to finish Top 8 better wages it also meant we could sell them to teams who could finish Top 8 and there were teams in the 9-12 bracket willing to take a punt if we made them available. The issue now is we're offering Top 6 salaries, but the definition of Top 6 salary has taken a kicking outside of the Premier League in the last couple of years, so for example the £120k base salary we're paying Ndombele is beyond what Milan, Roma, Sevilla, Leverkusen, Lyon etc etc etc are going to sign off paying anyone other than key members of their squad, so they certainly won;t be paying that to someone we're trying to offload PDQ It's also worth remembering that one of the first things Levy had to do when taking over the club was take an £11m loss on Rebrov, and that was back when £11m was a fee for a transformative signing and not what it is today, namely a fee for a depth option
We have, but then again United's approach hasn't worked because up until this summer they've largely trusted their transfer strategy to Worzel Gummidge. A billion quid later, what have they got to show for it? Our single biggest failing was the catastrophic 2019 window. It saw us acting like one of the big boys for the first time but it set us back £130m on bilge and we are still paying the price 4 years on.
Brazilian prodigy Endrick, who was born in 2006 , got his first goal yesterday. He's now the youngest player to score in the Brazilian top flight at 16 and 97 days. The Palmeiras striker has been heavily linked with Real Madrid and is now worth €60m, apparently.
Every time we've splurged it's been a disaster Comolli splurged in 2008, which ended up with a sacked manager, a sacked DoF, and most of the signed players being offloaded soon after Baldini splurged in 2013, which ended up with a sacked manager, a sacked DoF, and most of the signed players being offloaded soon after Poch splurged in 2019, which ended up with a sacked manager, and most of the signed players being a drain on our resources during a global pandemic which made offloading them borderline impossible The key difference is that 2019 fell onto the Poch's shoulders, when Comolli and Baldini both went insane with prospective windfalls and it turned out they didn't really do their homework before splashing the cash (or, in Comolli's case, didn't care as he wanted Jol out the picture so he could work with Ramos)
The solution to signing players who are not worth the fee isn't the mythical 'improve the process' as if that was possible we would have already done it. Well over half the players we sign won't be worth the fee....that's true for all clubs and always will be. The only real solution is to have more money so that we can afford better players so even the below fee standard ones are still quite good and can afford to simply move on those who are not performing whatever the loss.
Actually no, the most realistic solution is to balance spending, so while we may make a major investment in some players there are squad players we can at least break even on, plus some players we can make a profit on if they were to leave This is where our splurges in 2008, 2013 and 2019 went wrong, because so many of the signings ended up leaving for/are likely going to leave for a loss, with David Bentley being the worst example, as we didn't make back a penny of his fee, which Conmanoli conveniently forgets about whenever trying to take credit for the profit we made on Bale
I think that the obvious area that we can improve in transfers is making appropriate signings. Bentancur and Kulusevski have been notable successes. Why? Because they fit the system that Conte prefers and have the right qualities for him. Both hardworking, have good engines, comfortable on the ball and have good attitudes. Avoid luxury players and positions that we don't use, like fullback. They won't work and probably won't get picked, either.
Agree with this and it’s why I find it strange that Spence doesn’t get a look-in. To me he seems tailor made to Conte’s style of WB, may lack a little technique on the crossing side but his speed and athleticism and ability to basically be a second winger is what Alonso/ Moses were at Chelsea and Hakimi was at Inter. Bissouma too seems like he’d suit one of the midfielders in Conte’s usual systems due to his ball carrying and physical aspects but feels like he’s trying to play him too defensively - though I think he’s just playing the whole team too defensively this season so that’s no a major surprise.
Conte seems very keen on players following his plan so perhaps Spence doesn't do that in training. Sometimes the plan seems rather different from my expectations. For example if you watch Hojbjerg closely, when we are defending deep he is usually to be found in space rather than marking anyone. I assume this is deliberate as it's so obvious but I don't understand the logic of it at all.
I think the logic is that Hojbjerg, followed by Bentancur, are currently the main 'out ball' options whose job it is to receive possession inside our half and/or capitalise on an opposition error and get that ball to the attackers as soon as possible. To do this, they need to be in space and certainly not facing our goal. They have become this because our wingback are atrocious, but in truth it doesn't really suit either of them as their long range passing isn't good enough. Either way, you and I have been Hojbjerg's most vocal critics on here but it has to be said, while not perfect he far less resembles a headless chicken than he did last season.
You are probably right. It was Hojbjerg who let Marcus Edwards past him very easily for their goal on Wednesday I think. Still does that too often for my liking but he has scored some goals recently which partly makes up for it.
