It is definitely getting better, we are just far too cautious at the moment and need to cut loose some times.
First you make the mistake of assuming this seasons team is the same as last. They are different. So to be objective you must only use the 4 matches. Memphis and Morgan and Bastian were not around. Second, I do not accept that United do not create. They do but they for lack of a sharp striker cannot transfer them into goals or clear cut opportunities. Memphis and martial will rectify that. I may be in a minority here but I can see the team improving. A lot of fans are frustrated that United are not winning every natch. But surely he is improving section by section. The press are having a field day about United. United are the biggest club and therefore the most hated here by the non-United fans and the media. They sell more that way. If United do not buy any players they would have pilloried United. If they had bought an established player, it would have been a reject or old player, if it is a young one, then it is huge gamble. I would take the media and others criticism with a pinch of salt. Martial may not worth £36m currently but United has now opened the floodgates. Martial is not going to be the only teenage player worth that much.
Well United must have been reading my posts about the amount that needed to be spent... "...[the] United’s owners, the Glazer family, now sanctioning the spending of more than £300 million on new players since the retirement in May 2013 of Sir Alex Ferguson, the club are determined to focus on high-end individual signings after reshaping the squad left behind by the Scot two years ago." Their strategy was a no brainer. Continuing the SAF strategy of buying carefully and VFM and saving money just would not work without the great man as manager. Over the years, he had been tweaking a very well oiled machine. Without him, the whole machinery did not work as Moyes found to his cost. United are absolutely flushed with money. The TV revenue and the Adidas deal have added to their already huge budget. On top of it, United wants to maintain their position as the biggest global football brand (Madrid might argue aginast that!). But it looks that the more and bigger they spend, the more they accummulate. Buying Martial viewed in that context was consistent with that strategy. It has created controversy, kept United in the back pages of every newspaper in the world, and shown that the club had the finance to get the players it wanted (as long as the other side was willing to release them). In that context, Real may have lost something with their behaviour re the De Gea transfer. Yes, they will get DG free at the end of it but it also showed that financially they are not in the same class as United, having to keep an eye on the pennies. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...se-world-class-stars-over-squad-building.html
That's utter crap, complete nonsense. Buying this lad is a risk and it may well work out but to suggest it was some kind of media stratedgy is plain silly.
I didn't say media strategy you RS fool The media jizz is a "good" consequence of the startegy but not driven by it. Buying the players that LVG wants at the very top prices and overpaying and taking a gamble in the process IS consistent with the business strategy. When United were bidding for Neymar or Bale, lots of people said it was a nonsense. I believe that United was willing whatever the clubs would ask (even >£100m) but they were not selling. I know that many of our own fans have yet to get round to this idea. But United with Wodward have changed their strategy on buying players. Get quality at whatever cost, the club ultimately won't lose. At least financially.
Didn't realise it was you, though it was an article from the Telegraph but regardless there is a part in there suggesting that the Martial deal was partly engineered to keep Utd in the media which is something I doubt very much. The overall stratedgy is still up in the air, if you start winning again with the players you've bought then yes it has worked but if you don't then at some point the finances have to be balanced. Spending that kind of money on Martial is a big gamble but one that you can afford, if he's a player then great, if not then do you buy like that again and again? That doesn't seem a good idea.
That is the crux of the matter. The Business/Financial strategy is different to the football one. The trick is buying the player who fits both. Di Maria was a classical example of one who fits one but proved a failure for LVG's football strategy. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that Martial will fit in well and prove a footballing sucess. It is a risk for LVG but he wanted the player and it is risk worth taking. As I said if United can buy him at the price why not? let the other clubs grumble but they'll have to pay high too in future. I can see United continuing to hunt for top players (established or potential) because at the moment they can do so. Top of the business league does not mean top of the football league.
It does make a certain sense and the money is there to take these educated gambles, with the price of players being so high there's nothing to say you won't at some point make a profit on Martial. Too many of these gambles going wrong is the only concern for you.
Not really tbh - we have the money to absorb a great many of them without any impact on our spending. Not intending this as a piss take, but by comparison Liverpool have gambled and lost on Carroll, Downing, Adam, Coates, Allen, Borini, Balotelli, Lovren and others over the past five years and still have the money to splash on £30m plus signings, and we have a much stronger financial base than you do right now. We'd need to buy two Martials a season and have them both flop so badly as to have no residual value for it to really affect our financial power in the long term. And even flops like Di Maria, Schurrle, Kakuta, Carroll, Filipe Luis, Ba etc generally tend to have enough residual value to let the buying club cut their losses, or even make a little profit on the transfer price. It's rare to get one like Downing, Torres or Balotelli when you hardly make anything back, or have to pay another club to take them off your hands. Heck, we even managed to rake in £2.5 million for Bebe! Also with the new money from the PL and CL, it's not so much a case of it being a gamble that Martial will flop if we buy him. It would be more of a gamble if we let one of our rivals buy him which resulted in him being a success and them squeezing ahead of us in the league. Transfer business at the moment seems as much a case of keeping good players out of the hands of rivals as getting them yourself. Sigurdsson, Dempsey, Willian, Salah and Remy - all players that rival clubs didn't really need, and a large part of their interest was in trying to stop you guys getting your targets and have a realistic chance of getting back into the top four imo.
@Swarbs Too many of these gambles going wrong is the only concern for you. Financially yes but I meant in terms of competeing for the league and winning more than the financial implication, I agree with you on that point completely we've been **** for a long time but still spend loads.
Aye, I covered that in the second part of the post. Financially we can afford any player we want, so it's worth the gamble from a sporting perspective, because even if Martial flops we will just buy someone else. And buying him avoids the risk of him succeeding at one of our title rivals. And it's a hell of a lot better than buying no one!
What's surprising me is the amount of vitriol in the press about the purchase. There is never a guarantee in football in terms of transfers. Who would have thought that Torres, Shevchenko could flop so badly? veron was hardly a big gamble at the time. Messi would probably do well here but there is no guararntee either. If United think he could improve the team, then it makes sense to buy him. The number of players who Chelsea acquire and loan out is incredible. At the last count it was nearly 50 and all over the world! Better make them unavailable to rivals. Some of them may turn out to be good, some may even make a profit but the objective that all these players are out of the market. I think we should have some sort of limit to discourage that kind of strategy.
There's less vitriol about the Sterling transfer which is currently costing £13million more. Sterling has played 99 games and scored 19 goals Martial has played 52 games and scored 11 goals Sterling is 1 year older. I guess Sterling is more proven as he's played in the PL whereas Martial plays in a weak French league. The only time I've seen him play was when Monaco were knocking Arsenal out of the CL, which happened around the same time that PSG knocked Chelsea out of the CL.
Really? He cost THIRTY SIX MILLION quid and none of us had heard of him! If the answer to that is '**** it, we can afford it' then the vitriol is fully justified.
United as it transpired paid that huge fee because he was being targetted by Barcelona, Chelsea and PSG. In twelve months, there would have been a bidding war. United jumped in and paid over the odds. It is not going to affect their budget greatly and every transfer is a gamble. Some are less than others. Torres was no risk gamble but turned out to be £50m down the drain. If the GGs lose a few millions from the deal, so what? The calculation is that he is better than anything we had (Hernandez, Januzaj, Falcao, RVP). I noticed that you've put the amount in capital to highlight an astronomical figure. This is the new world of the premiership clubs. £36m is not a huge figure now. Not when the likes of WBA are refusing to accept £20m for Berahino and Everton £35m + for Stones. yes, they are fantastic players but only a few years ago these bids will have been snapped up. And you can only get the likes of Neymar, Ronaldo etc for bids >100m. All this is not to say that United did not overpay. Of course they did. But then they can afford it. and LVG wants him too. Welcome to the new world.
£36 million is huge for an unknown. Nineteen years old, French. Never lived abroad, might not quite take to Manchester, you never know. (no reason why not mind, the French settle far better than the Iberians or S Americans). Stones and Berahinho are established premier league players and so are less of a gamble, plus we know there's a mark up on English players moving within the PL. Which ever way you spin it, this is an obscene amount of money and that is why it's such a talking point. I'm still stunned, it's simply ridiculous. **** me, I was going mental the Bebe deal (and was 100% correct), this knocks spots off it.
I am not stunned. For me that's a great buy. Whichever way you look at it. May be I am 2 or 3 years ahead of everybody else I have said that many of our own fans have not come round to the idea of the new United and to the new world of the premiership. Clubs especially United are so flush with cash that even a hint of a bidding war pushes the prices up significantly. For me it is crazy that United could accummulate profits without spending some of them on players and improve the team. Another thing, potential cost money. That was not recognised at the time of Ronaldo for example. Ronaldo was bought for 12.3m and was criticised as being bonkers. But he always had potential to be a great player. PS: (We dont want to be like Arsenal. They have huge reserves of money but they are looking for Value for money. As soon as they get competition they will pull out because they will only pay their valuation)
It's a great deal if he turns out to be good, otherwise it's not. For every Ronaldo there is an Anderson.
To be fair, Anderson may not be a Ronaldo but complimented the team pretty well through some of those years.
http://ir.manutd.com/~/media/Files/M/Manutd-IR/Annual Reports/manchester-united-plc-20f-20141027.pdf #reality ...and it's got worse in 2015........
