Transfer Rumours United's ever on going rebuild , are we nearly there yet?

Some quality posts today lads, all hitting the nail on the proverbial

You've said it all. The only thing I'll add is that we seem to stick all our eggs in one basket when it comes to transfers and proceed pig-headedly towards either a deadline day overpriced purchase or a flop transfer window. And if it's the former, we end up with a player whose transfer has been overhyped and as a result he receives undeserved focus from media and fans alike.

As has been mentioned the reasons are primarily because we come across as desperate for the player and historically are known for overpaying for players. So how do we get back control over that? Well I'm no Warren Buffet and correct me if I'm wrong, but someone should be thinking how do we wrestle that power away from the selling club... and surely the answer is we should have a list of targets in each of the positions we're looking for from various clubs... which puts us in a position where the club can demonstrate to other clubs that we're prepared to walk away as we have other options available. Give it 3 or 4 transfer windows and they'll soon get the message and at the very least we'll have the choice to address the needs of our squad, and at the very best do so by acquiring our primary targets - efficiently. And of course what I've described is what a DoF would deliver, but it's not a hard concept is it!

Football transfers is one of those markets where the seller has more power than the buyer. But the funny thing is, with the impact of the coronavirus on clubs finances this year it really has become a buyers' market. That is also btw why the likes of Chelsea and even Liverpool have achieved some fantastic purchases. And yet United still manage to get themselves bent over a barrel by the seller! It's insane, there's no other way of describing the incompetence of those in charge.

 

I read an article years ago that said Fergie identified areas he needed/wanted to strengthen each season then compile a list of 3 players in each position.
The list was passed to Gill and his mandate was to get one player off the list for each position. This gave Gill wiggle room and also leverage against the selling clubs because he wasn't tied to one option.

 

Absolutely, which is why I said it was hardly a difficult concept. Seriously how inept does Woody et al have to be not to figure this out? I think only United and Real Madrid have a completely opposite approach to the rest of the footballing world. And I reckon the only reason we are is because Woody actually is a Real wannabe!

I have horrible thoughts about Woody, Diego. I don't mind admitting it. I'm getting to a very very dark place with that bloke. I want to crop dust him with hot sh1t... and that's just for starters.

 

The position we need to strengthen being done the way you'd want it to be done...

Manchester City have held talks over signing Benfica defender Ruben Dias.

City boss Pep Guardiola wants a right-sided centre-back after choosing not to sign a replacement when former skipper Vincent Kompany retired in 2019.

Napoli's Kalidou Koulibaly, 29, was initially the top target, but Napoli want £80m for the Senegal defender, which City are not prepared to pay.

Dias, 23, has impressed during three seasons at Benfica and was selected for Portugal's 2018 World Cup squad.

Guardiola is assessing a number of options before the transfer window closes on 5 October.

City are also interested in Sevilla's France Under-21 international Jules Kounde, who who helped his side overcome Wolves and Manchester United in the Europa League before they beat Inter Milan in the final.

Atletico Madrid's Jose Gimenez is also under consideration, though City have rejected reports from Spain that they have made a bid for the 25-year-old Uruguayan.

 

A long, but readable lift from the Telegraph -


Manchester United continue to suffer from a series of short-term, populist decisions which have backfired.

They used to be the polar opposite. United were once an organisation strong enough to withstand whatever flak was flying on major decisions, confident it would serve their long-term prosperity.

Sir Alex Ferguson was a master of it. Go through his reign and see all the tough calls he made which were at the time contentious and divisive, but were vindicated in hindsight.

Think of the sale of Jaap Stam, or break-up of his first title-winning team when he sold Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis. Remember how he dismantled the side he inherited by offloading fans’ favourites Paul McGrath and Norman Whiteside, and ruthlessly ended the United careers of others who excelled under him.

Ferguson never played to the Old Trafford gallery when he knew what had to be done, even taking on Roy Keane in the knowledge it would cause rancour.

Managers and executives operate in a world where the right calls are not necessarily the most instantly unifying, especially when it comes to walking away from deals and telling long-serving players they are finished.

Now look at how reactive the Old Trafford hierarchy has become whenever criticism is most fierce.

Whatever the view on the justification behind sacking David Moyes in April, 2014, what really prompted it a month before the end of the season? The timing was all about satisfying the supporters’ craving for immediate action, without wise consideration as to the best man to step in when they turned to Louis Van Gaal.

When United recruited Jose Mourinho, they were seduced by the idea of appointing a world-renowned coach rather than the right match for their club. Manchester City had just lured Pep Guardiola, so United wanted to respond with their own elite name despite obvious concerns as to whether Mourinho fit Old Trafford ideals.

When that failed they installed a club legend, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, to successfully pacify fans and buy time. Solskjaer was given the job full time after the uplift of a good start. That was because the fans loved the idea, when the board knew he would never have been a candidate for the role at any other elite club.

The same short-term principles have been applied to most of United’s transfers since 2013, with every coach able to calculate that when the pressure intensifies, the cheque book will open amid the clamour to ‘stop haggling and pay whatever it takes’.

Look at the signing of Alexis Sanchez, which was more about the vanity of gazumping Manchester City than a shrewd, necessary purchase. City acted like the bigger, better club by saying no when the wages became ridiculous.

Contract extensions have gone the same way. United resisted the sale of David de Gea to Real Madrid by handing him a new deal worth a reported £350,000 a week. Why? How can a goalkeeper be among the Premier League’s biggest earners? It smacked of panic as if the people at the top thought United would somehow fall apart if De Gea left. This is Manchester United. No player departure will ever devastate the club in such a way. De Gea has lost his edge ever since and his salary means they cannot sell him.

A year ago Paul Pogba agitated for a move. Now he is entering that point in his contract where United must either sell him or give him a lucrative new deal to prevent him leaving for free. I suspect they will offer him a contract. If they can get anywhere near what they paid for him, they should be selling. Not popular, but the right thing to do given the circumstances and his contribution since he joined.

I categorise all the decisions they have taken so far as the easy, often expensive option, to temporarily appease simmering discontent.

Hearing the calls for United to spend big again in the aftermath of last weekend’s defeat to Crystal Palace makes it sound like Groundhog Day at Old Trafford, the same voices making the same arguments and offering the same solutions.

“Spend, spend and spend some more,” they say, in this case by paying whatever it takes to sign Jadon Sancho and a centre-back.

I have no idea how competent or otherwise vice-chairman Ed Woodward is as a football executive but I can state one fact with certainty; in the seven years since Ferguson retired, failure to spend money is not the root of United’s problems. The club has paid close to one billion on transfer fees alone since 2013, which is mind-boggling when fans and former players suggest they are still ‘two or three players short’ of competing for the title.

Over the last year, United have made better signings in Harry Maguire, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and later Bruno Fernandes and were adamant they would stand by Solskjaer, citing the success of rivals in building over three or four years. Finishing third last season was as well as they could have expected in the league.

United’s hesitation in meeting Sancho’s valuation so far in this transfer window feels like it is an attempt to reverse the culture of overpaying.


As fine a player as Sancho is, is he worth £108 million? And what impact would such a deal have on the game time of Mason Greenwood, who looks like the best young attacking talent in the country by some distance, scoring 17 goals last season.

If United think Sancho is worth it, the deal should have been done already. What I cannot understand is if United do not think so, why haven’t they moved on? If the deal is not right, regardless of how much it upsets fans, walking away and buying an alternative target can be a sign of strength, not weakness. But based on recent history United have a habit of eventually paying what they were quoted months earlier. And so the wheel turns. If United pay the asking fee for Sancho now, it will look like they have blinked as a direct consequence of criticism following their first Premier League defeat. That will play well to the fans, but it is not the way to determine transfer policy or run a football club of United's stature.

The problem they have is trust has been so eroded since 2013, every poor result and performance will provoke the kind of hysterical reaction that greeted last Saturday. That is a dangerous place to be, especially 18 months into a manager’s reign.

I agree Sancho would make United stronger this season, but against Palace it was defensive vulnerability which was the main concern. The structure of the side was poor as much as individual performance.

I would not make any confident predictions about United’s prospects this season based on one game.

I have consistently made the observation that the situation is never as bad as it looks at United - there could be many reasons for a lacklustre display on the first day of the season.

Spending well obviously helps massively, but that alone will not get the club back where it expects to be.

If the last seven years have not shown those with the club in their heart that bowing to external pressure has not worked, they will continue to be trapped in the same unsatisfactory loop of overpaying for underperformance.

 

That is brilliant and concise article.

The common denominator here is Woodward. He can’t delegate for sh* even with his failures. He has to first go but I doubt that would ever happen. It feels like the Glazers work for him at this point.

Then the next in line is Ole. I know that he’s a legend, and I believe he’s done a great job putting this current team together and breaking from Jose’s culture. However, he’s not the right man to take the club to the next level. Fans still romanticize the idea that he’ll come good, but if we are honest with ourselves, he simply doesn’t have the strong attributes to bring the consistency that one would expect when you spend so much on wages.

Yup! We are a populist club!

 

Unfortunately the other thing that goes with Woodward is a complete lack of any understanding of football itself.

Hence, give Ole the job in the first place because we won a few games and that. Get his players in, cliche tastic bollocks.

Problem now is he also doesn't understand that it's now clear they should employ an actual decent manager/coach, which Solskjaer isn't.

He'll wait until the season is irretrievable before sacking him.

He won't see that the time is now, or at least once the transfer business is done, if there is even going to be any more.

 

Who would people want or expect to take over if Ole goes? Genuine question, I'm open to any suggestions tbph. I also don't know what quality managers are out there except Poch.

 

Only Poch readily available really.

Did Allegri get a job? No even sure.

If not, him too.

 

A simple solution could even be to give Solskjaer the DoF football (token) job.

Much prefer t to be Edwin vds but it can't denied Solskjaer has good idea of where the squad and club should go.

Just can't ****ing coach them into playing decent football.

 

This is really a sound idea on Solskjaer getting the role. Sadly, Ed fkin Woodward won't be reading this as he goes deeper into working on a financial mathematical equation to figure out who should be director of football. That equation always ends with one name... Ed Woodward!

 

I don't think Ole's pride would allow him to accept a sideways move, in effect, a demotion from the manager's role into DoF - who would. Whatever happens at OT, Ole will be guaranteed a higher profile manager's job elsewhere than would otherwise had been the case. The sad fact is that there isn't a cast-iron guarantee with any new manager, regardless of how successful they were with a previous club or a different league, unless you are Pep and you are gifted the job with the top team in every league every time you change clubs - whoever we give the job to after Ole it will be a gamble and on that basis I'd be happy to give him another year to clear out the crap - Jones, Rojo, Smalling, Shaw, Lingard, Pereira and Pogba etc, and put his own team together, .

 

There is no guarantee of course, there never is. BUT you can say there are better managers out there. Reading that article, imagine if the removal of Moyes and his replacement had been better planned - could we have gone for Klopp or Pep then? Right now, it's clear that Poch is a better manager than OGS. For me, his style of football, his ability to get the best out of his players, his general coaching and man management, was only held back by a Chief Exec who never supported his ambitions in the transfer window - a problem he wouldn't encounter at United AND I might add would probably have the right influence in getting players we actually need.

This isn't me pinning my colours to the Poch mast btw. He's the only example I can give as I seem to have lost touch with what else is out there in my older years!

 

But I don't see much support for Ole from Woodward and the Glazers. We are one of the wealthiest clubs in Europe yet window after window we seem to sit idly by, haggling over, fees while our competitors pay what it takes to get exactly the right player. We seem to be operating on the basis that if Woodward doesn't think a transfer deal represents 'value' in the commercial sense we don't get the player - and the cycle continues. As another 'almost there' season progresses we are forced into sticking plaster buys in January. I fail to see how it would be any different with Poch. We might improve our chances of getting a striker like Kane - but would Woodward pay the money that Levy would be asking?

 

Yeh but that's a separate issue though. Everything relies on having a sensible approach to transfers... whoever the manager is.

 

Woodward needs to appoint a DoF and to give them an annual transfer budget. The DoF and the manager work together within that budget to buy and sell players - stellar signings and one-off buys would still need to be referred to the board, but day to day management of transfers is out of Woodwards control - that's what we need.

 

3 days.. 3 fcking days

Manchester City have agreed a deal to sign defender Ruben Dias, Benfica have announced, with Nicolas Otamendi moving in the opposite direction.

 

Why has van De Beek not started a game and we are still looking to add more to the midfield? We are we going to play all these midfielders? If Sancho comes in, then surely one of either Rashford or Greenwood will not make the team. Or maybe Rashford becomes the main forward and Martial takes a sit.

This is the problem with the current transfer strategy.

 

Official bid made for Sancho - rejected.