The problem you're not seeing is if you spunk £200m on £50m players you need to pay those players wages (at least £100k a week for a £50m player - say that's a 5 year deal on each you're talking £26m per player on wages for that contact so that's £304m over 5 years. If you then do not qualify for CL for 2 of those years (plus Glazers will also need to invest further as players get old and I can honestly see only 1 player who you'll get £30m + for in your squad and that's only if he reaches his full potential) then financially you're up the creek. CL isn't nailed on for anyone anymore unless you've got an oilgarch or an arab as an owner. You'll fail to make CL this year (lets be honest). You need to make the right signings, not the most expensive (look at us - Countinho, Suarez & Sterling together cost less than Mata).
I disagree with that but even if true, RVP with Rooney as back up and Welbeck/Hernandez and 3/4 is still one of the best in the league and will serve you fine for the next season or 2. What's the point in buying a top forward to then have to bench either that forward or RVP when you have much more pressing issues in other areas? You're already effectively playing Rooney out of his best position to accommodate RVP, and you're playing about 4 players outside their best position (or leaving them on the bench) to accommodate Rooney at 10. Why convolute matters even further? Central defence (especially post Vidic) and central midfield are surely the most pressing areas and perhaps full backs.
Hire this man as manager!! That is exactly what went wrong last night. At best naïve, at worst incompetent management. 4 midfielders of which 2 were cleverely and young against 5 midfielders, away from home in the C.L knockouts. Moyes experience at this level shone thru. Fergie would have gone there and got a narrow win and finished the job at OT easily.
I'm not saying he is perfect, far from it. What I am saying is you should have a lot of names ahead of him on the exit list!
Jury's out for me. Yes, Moyes picked a poor team for last night (tho' without Jones, Evans, Mata and Nani we didn't have many other choices). But **** me those players should at least have been able to show some desire and willingness to play. Unless Moyes actually told them to stand around most of the game looking like they were lost then the players have to shoulder much of the blame - it's not like we were playing Barca or Bayern. My main concern is that too many of our team (Vidic, Rio, Evra, Carrick, RVP, Valencia) are coming towards the end of their careers, and have won so much that they just don't seem to care any more. I've said time and time again that SAF's biggest strength was his ability to get players to respond and play to their highest level season after season after season. I'm not sure any other manager has that ability to do that to that same extent. Even if we get rid of Moyes, we would need to bring in half a team of new players to get rid of the old ones who just sit on their hands and fall back on their reputations now SAF has gone. And if we're going to do that, we might as well give Moyes a chance to build that team - he managed to build and rebuild at Everton for a full decade, so there's no reason he couldn't do the same at Utd, if he gets the time to bring in some players who will actually play like they give a ****.
It gives me no pleasure to say I have said all this before. I said that the squad was **** and we needed about £300m to be able to compete again at the highest level. Like you, yesterday was for me a new low. As I said in another thread, rarely have I seen such a lack of desire and accuracy. Hardly any tackles and passes were going all over the place. Absolute pits. And I am not banking on any risk of United retrieving the situation. Possibly with a Fergie team but with this team I can only see a draw and disppointment. I said in the match thread before the match I would have been happy with draw or even a 1-0 defeat. But the performance was just astounding in the worse sense. This team is so **** that it needs to be totally disbanded. I would be accused of being extreme yet again but this is excatly what's needed. I have seen this thing happen with United. I said earlier: It would get worse before it gets better. This is not being pessimistic. It is experience and when the slide happens there is very little, anyone (you, me, CEo, owners can do). All you can do and hope that the bottom is reached quickly and then with fresh talent, evry one can focus on the task in hand. The defence is now totally unreliable: Vidic, Ferdinand, Evra should not play for us next season. The midfield: Cleverley, Young, Valencia not good enough. Kagawa: jury still out but why didnt we play him yesterday? he is ****ing perfect for this type of CL game. We need at least one top class striker up front.
do you really need to spend so much money? rodgers took LFC from 7 to fighting for 4th again with 60mil net over 2 seasons so moyes needing hundreds of millions to go from 1st to 4th doesnt seem right.. you dont need to replace everyone with a world class player just ones better than you currently have and go from there
If Rodgers had have had 200 million though, would he have shopped for bargains? Even Rodgers is surprised how quickly this Liverpool side has come on together. Sturridge, Courtinho etc have been far better than their price tags suggested and some of that has to be put down to luck.
True, they are. I just don't see Hernanadez having much of a future, unless of course a new manager can give him the necessary impetus to get back to form, and I also see RVP agitating to move as when he joined he can't have envisaged this. Should those two possibilities NOT happen then you're right, we don't need a striker. For now. Bozz, the wages get paid over the term of their contract, money which the club is more than capable of earning and covering. The big outlay is the one hit transfer fees. The reason the players will be so costly is that clubs know we need the players, so will hike up prices, and they are required to be of the very highest quality right now, not potential, in the three most crucial positions. It won't be cheap.
You already have two superb strikers, a very good one and a great squad player All four are better than anything we have at Chelsea. A good manager could get a couple more seasons out of this fantastic quintet of forwards. Hernandez would get 25 goals a season for us. We should have taken him as part of the mata deal. Welbeck would score more than eto or Torres, and Rvp has definitely got a couple more years at the top left in him. A decent manager would get a couple more seasons out of your some of your ageing defence too, especially if they were protected by a decent DM
Your financial analysis seems a bit confused there Bozz - player wages are paid annually, so if we buy five players and pay them £120k a week on average then that's £30m per year. Then we lose Vidic, Rio, Anderson, and probably two of Cleverley, Nani, Evra, Hernandez then we would save £20m per year and end up with the same number of players but higher quality. A net increase of £10m per year in the wage bill is something we could easily swallow even without CL footy, given the new sponsorship deals we have signed and the size of our support. No chance we'll end up financially up the creek unless we somehow contrive to get ourselves relegated next year (no guarantees there!) It's more a case of what the owners will sanction to spend, rather than what our finances will bear.
Our priority is a captain. Nobody stood out as leader last night (and i don't just mean Mr slap the turf Rooney) I mean someone who will shout scream and drag his team along like Keano.
Why though? Because of one team selection. You seemed so certain yesterday afternoon that Moyes could be the right man, writing: "I just do not believe in sacking a bloke without giving him some time to have a go at his job. People should be sacked for misconduct. He is not yet at the point where he should be sacked for being incapable of doing his job. I credit myself with having a good level of intelligence, sadly lacking in a large majority of posters on this forum, you included, so I understand the enormity of his new position and get why he needs just a little bit of time to get his head around it." He picked the wrong team last night but is not guilty of misconduct.
Aye, it didn't look good. Tho' with Jones, Rafael, Evans and Nani all injured and Mata cup tied, what team would you have gone for?
i will give him another chance. If he doesn't go all out from kick off at OT to overwhelm Olymp, then he has totally lost it for me and his position will be untenable. the performance will be more important than the result. the worrying thing for me is that he put out a side like that when he had a 5-0 result away against Beyer.
