The Manchester United Thread

[Legend Incredible]

 

[steveorobbo]

He might as well be. Thats how United CB's are bad.

I said from day one Bailly was s***e and a liability waiting to happen. Got laughed at. Ive not seen anything yet to prove me wrong. Especially that shambles when he was on the right with young and got dragged off. Lindelof is just as bad. Said that ages ago as well. Out of Bailly, Lindelof and Smalling id honestly play Smalling. At least he's rarely beaten in the air. And coming off the back of a good loan with confidence. Although by now that confidence would have well gone with how he's been treated since coming back.

I dont get the messages from Ole. He's got Mengi full time in the squad. Bigging him up basically using the "if you're good enough you're old enough" line. Why not start him today? Or even bring him on. It was the perfect opportunity. He obviously doesnt like the defenders he has, but talks Mengi up. So play him. If he's as good as he thinks to be in the squad rather than a loan, play him and if he's right we save £50m on a new defender that will only set him back if we sign one. Did Liverpool promote Joe Gomez to the first team then ***** millions on a new defender without giving him a chance, and stop him progressing?

We need to learn from past mistakes. We had Michael Keane that was too good for the reserves and just won player of the year i think. Ready to step up. ***** millions on Phil Jones coz Blackburn actually gave hime a chance and he looked half decent. Knocked Keane back down and he didnt progress. And I'd still have him over Jones now. But imagine if Keane got all the game time Jones did that season in the first team and since. I bet he'd be a lot better than he is now. But we are stuck with Jones.

If he's gonna big Mengi up, use him. Give him a proper chance. Instead of getting someone else in for millions and knocking him back down. If we do sign someone else then Bailly, Jones and Rojo need to go at least. Which leaves us with the new signing, Maguire (been robbed blind), Lindelof (****), Smalling (best defender we have on recent form), Tuanzebe (needs more games when fit) and Mengi. Unless a new signing is better than Maguire or at least better than Lindelof don't bother. Give the games to Mengi and Tuanzebe and show some faith in them.

 

[steveorobbo]

View attachment 516418

Dont get me started on that c**t. 3 good games a season. Most frustrating player ive ever seen. Always came across as wanting to be Ronaldo. Even started copying him with his stance at free kicks and stuff. Every corner went to their first man. Thousands a week wages and couldn't put the ball around the penalty spot taking a corner.

Could have been a half decent player if he stopped thinking he was Ronaldo MKII and actually got his head down and played his own game

 

[Legend Incredible]

Dont get me started on that c**t. 3 good games a season. Most frustrating player ive ever seen. Always came across as wanting to be Ronaldo. Even started copying him with his stance at free kicks and stuff. Every corner went to their first man. Thousands a week wages and couldn't put the ball around the penalty spot taking a corner.

Could have been a half decent player if he stopped thinking he was Ronaldo MKII and actually got his head down and played his own game

Yeah, thing that frustrated me the most is I knew there was a talented lad in there but he just couldn't get his head right and display that talented on a more consistent basis.

One week, he looks like Robben reincarnated, scoring bangers from outside the box. The next week, he's auditioning for the NFL. He's one of the biggest "could've been" players to even put on a United shirt

 

[Legend Incredible]

I said from day one Bailly was s***e and a liability waiting to happen. Got laughed at. Ive not seen anything yet to prove me wrong. Especially that shambles when he was on the right with young and got dragged off....

He's not a right back tho...that plus I think he was playing with an injury (he got injured midway through the half).

 

[steveorobbo]

He's not a right back tho...that plus I think he was playing with an injury (he got injured midway through the half).

Fair enough that might have been the excuse for that game but every time I see him play I have no confidence at all. He's like a headless chicken. Accident waiting to happen. He's constantly diving in and left out of position. The only thing he has is pace to get back and recover but even then he's only another lunge and a foul away from a penalty and red card. I honestly dont see anything in him at all that convinces me he's at a world class standard. So that makes him no better than the players we are trying to shift. Thats why I'd rather Mengi, and Tuanzebe when fit get these games over the likes of Bailly, Jones and Rojo (even Lindelof) to prove they can take over. If we sign a new CB they need to be better than Maguire and be without a doubt the world class defender at the club. And considering what we have it shouldnt be hard to find one.

 

[Theatre of Dreams83]

View attachment 516419

That was absolute class save. His concentration was all the more impressive considering he had nothing to do for nearly most the night.

 

[Bujakaa92]

Kay: United ‘won lockdown’ but they’re still losing in the transfer market

Unlike United, their rivals are proactive, decisive and adept in the transfer market, in terms of recruitment and shifting deadwood

theathletic.com

These are dark, dark times in the football industry. It is not just the growing familiarity of matches being played in empty stadiums. It is the financial crisis that looms ever nearer with the news that the phased return of fans has been abandoned as Britain braces itself for the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For six months, clubs at every level have expressed concerns about the threat they face in a world without fans bringing money through the turnstiles. Andrea Agnelli, the Juventus chairman, warned recently that revenues among European clubs could drop by €4 billion over a two-year period. The Premier League said in a statement on Friday that English football is losing more than £100 million a month. The biggest, most powerful clubs are braced for a rough, turbulent ride. Beyond the elite, the fears are much starker.
Against that alarming backdrop, amid silence from the stands, two debates rage simultaneously.
The first is about how, for example, Chelsea can spend £200 million on new signings while other clubs are fighting for their existence or how Tottenham Hotspur can spend around £240,000 a week to take Gareth Bale on loan after borrowing £175 million from the Bank of England or how Arsenal can celebrate Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s new £250,000-a-week contract so soon after making 55 employees redundant.
Set against this debate is another one, far more trivial, about how, while some of their rivals are carrying on as normal, Manchester United can start the season with only one new signing, Donny van de Beek, and with Ed Woodward, their executive vice-chairman, warning of the need to “be responsible in our use of resources during this most extraordinarily challenging time for everyone in football”.
That is undeniably true. If ever there was a time for purse strings to be tightened, surely this is it, ethically as well as from a business viewpoint. If Premier League clubs had shown a collective willingness to pull together and do more to help those clubs further down the pyramid, rather than shrugging their shoulders and carrying on as normal, we might be able to look to the future without a sense of trepidation.
But they haven’t done that. And there was something Woodward said on Saturday, in an open letter to the club’s supporters, that really grated. Having touched upon the economic pressures being felt by every football club, he said that “while we are fortunate to be in a more resilient position than most clubs, we are not immune from impact”.
Maybe this is just semantics, but that word “fortunate” doesn’t sit comfortably. There is nothing fortunate about United’s status as one of the biggest, most powerful clubs in world sport. Their success story goes back decades.
There is, however, something distinctly unfortunate about being owned by a regime that has cost the club far more than any pandemic ever will. The Athletic revealed in May that over a 15-year period United have paid around £1.5 billion in interest payments, bond buybacks, management fees, dividends and all the other costs that come with the dubious privilege of being owned by the Glazer family.
If we are talking about resilience, then United’s has been tested to a degree that few other clubs in world football could have withstood. The common counter-argument here is that they have continued to spend money in the transfer market under the Glazers — just over £1 billion of it (much of it terribly) since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 and Woodward replaced him as the most influential figure at the club. But it is an argument that misses the point. Every pound United have spent is a pound United have generated. So too is every pound among the £1.5 billion that has been used to prop up the Glazers’ ownership.
That is why it is possible to feel, on one hand, a growing concern about the way other clubs are carrying on regardless — spending like there is no tomorrow, which in some cases there really might not be if fans are now allowed back into stadiums soon — and, on the other hand, a certain sympathy for those United supporters who are growing increasingly fretful at the lack of progress in the transfer market.
Since football resumed in June, United have played six home matches and missed out on two more (against FC Copenhagen and Sevilla in the Europa League). The loss of match-day revenue from those eight matches is estimated at upwards of £35 million. That is a considerable dent in any business plan, but next to the cost of the Glazers’ ownership, year after year after year, it is a drop in the ocean.
United have not abandoned the idea of further reinforcements in addition to Van de Beek. Far from it. But it is clear that the effects of the pandemic have undermined their pursuit of Jadon Sancho. They felt at the start of the summer that the challenging financial climate might force Borussia Dortmund to sell the England winger for significantly less than their €120 million valuation, but the Bundesliga club have so far stood firm in their refusal to drop the asking price, leaving United to weigh up whether to pay the price, park their interest until January or move on to Plan B, whatever or whoever (Ivan Perisic? Douglas Costa? Ismaila Sarr?) that might involve.
It certainly feels a long time since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer warmed to the suggestion that United, as “one of the biggest clubs, financially well off”, might be in a position to “exploit” a difficult climate in the transfer market this summer. Perhaps the £40 million deal to take Van de Beek from Ajax could be put in that category, but otherwise it has looked as if Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and even Everton and Tottenham Hotspur have been better placed to “exploit” the market.
The message from Old Trafford, both before and since they opened their Premier League campaign on Saturday with a dismal 3-1 home defeat by Crystal Palace, is that United remain confident of strengthening the squad before the transfer window closes on October 5. They still hope to sign a new left-back and, ideally, another forward, but they feel that fans and media alike should trust the process and be more appreciative of the difficulties involved.
Fair enough. But why, year after year, do so many other clubs make it look so much easier? And can United’s supporters really trust the process? Internally the club believe they are now in a far stronger, more united position, having developed a more collegiate decision-making process since Solskjaer took over from the more divisive figure of Jose Mourinho, but it is not always easy to share their confidence in a process that led them last summer to spend, for example, £80 million on Harry Maguire, who has been solid for the most part but far from transformative. Van de Beek is a highly talented player, but should another creative midfielder, on top of Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes, really have been a top priority this summer? Time will tell.
Then there is the ongoing issue of squad management. It is one thing to cite a surplus of defenders to explain the difficulty of signing a new one, but Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Marcos Rojo all signed new long-term contracts, to varying degrees of bewilderment, between March 2018 and February 2019. Jones played 135 minutes of Premier League football last season. He is 19 months into a four-and-a-half-year deal. And how on earth have United ended up in a position where they have three high-class goalkeepers (David de Gea, Sergio Romero and Dean Henderson) competing for one place but so little strength in depth in so many other positions?
It cannot be easy to move on Jones, Smalling or Rojo, or Diogo Dalot or Jesse Lingard, when they are on far bigger contracts than they would be elsewhere, but, quite apart from the wisdom of handing out those deals in the first place, there are questions to be asked about United’s ability to play the market. Patrice Evra’s withering criticism of Woodward and Matt Judge, the club’s transfer negotiator, contained some familiar lines. Other clubs are proactive, decisive and adept when it comes to offloading unwanted players. United, for all their relief at finally having paid off Alexis Sanchez, appear far less so, which clearly doesn’t help when it comes to the difficulty of bringing players in.
It all takes us back to the familiar question of whether United need a director of football — surely they do — or, to frame that question slightly differently, whether they have the right structure and expertise when it comes to establishing and implementing a long-term philosophy. There is certainly a more unified vision now than there was under previous managers, or indeed in the hopelessly naive early years of Woodward’s leadership, but it involves putting an awful lot of faith in Woodward’s knowledge and leadership, the scouting team’s ability to identify top-class talent, Judge’s ability to strike deals and, not least, Solskjaer’s ability to get the best out of the players at his disposal. From the outside, all of those things still seem very much open to question.

 

[Bujakaa92]

Continued (maybe someone knows better place to post some link that copys text so everyone can read?

This isn’t about the defeat by Palace on Saturday. That was a wretched performance — and the complaints about a lack of sharpness and the absence of key personnel, following an absurdly short break, rang a little hollow upon seeing Manchester City’s highly impressive victory away to Wolverhampton Wanderers two days later. Yes, it underlined United’s need for reinforcements, but it also exposed a glaring lack of cohesion among a squad built, or least thrown together, at great expense. So much of it was familiar: the weaknesses of Victor Lindelof, Luke Shaw and Maguire in one-on-one situations, the struggles of Daniel James on the right wing and the nonchalance of Pogba, once the world’s most expensive player, as he went through the motions in midfield.
Even without further new signings, United should be far, far better than they looked against Palace. To suggest otherwise would be to let Solskjaer and an expensively assembled group of players off the hook. All of them, manager included, have points to prove this season. If talent alone were enough to win matches, they would have started their season with a victory. Palace beat them by virtue of being fitter, more organised and performing as a team rather than a group of individuals.
As Carl Anka wrote earlier in the week, shopping cannot be the only Plan B. Arguably more than ever, in these straitened times, clubs must find a way to develop and work with the talent at their disposal, which is why the clarity of that vision and the expertise of those who implement it is so important. Great if you have Ferran Soriano, Txiki Begiristain and Pep Guardiola. Great if you have Mike Gordon, Michael Edwards and Jurgen Klopp. Woodward, Judge and Solskjaer? Again, time will tell. It all looks a long way from, to use Gary Neville’s phrase, “best in class”.
So many of the questions come back to the ownership model, though, and to a regime which Evra, in an emotional outburst on Instagram, said is threatening to undo the good work of the Ferguson years. “Some people, they want to blow all this legacy away,” the former France defender said. “For what? Business? We are better than that.”
It feels like a long time since United were being praised for their approach in the early weeks of the pandemic. It wasn’t just Marcus Rashford, earning widespread praise for lobbying the government to extend its free-school-meals scheme over the summer months as part of his campaign to reduce food poverty among children. It was the number of small but significant gestures the club made: reimbursing travel costs for those fans who had paid to go to Austria for the Europa League tie against LASK, making goodwill payments to casual staff and a firm, immediate commitment to paying staff throughout the lockdown period while encouraging them to volunteer for the NHS (in contrast to other clubs who drew criticism for rushing to place staff on furlough) as well as all the excellent work done by the Manchester United Foundation in supporting communities.
One report even suggested that United had been “lockdown champions” and, while there was no shortage of positive contributions from elsewhere in the football industry, it was refreshing to see a much-maligned regime displaying a more compassionate side. It was without question Woodward’s finest hour at Old Trafford to date.
If that compassion had extended to condemning the excesses of the transfer market and pleading for their rivals to come together to form a rescue plan to help those clubs further down the pyramid, it would be inspirational indeed.
But no. If United are in danger of falling short of their objectives in the transfer market once more, it is not out of principle and it is not for want of trying. It is because they find themselves restrained — and, whether financially or in expertise, that was the case long before the pandemic came along and made things much worse.

 

[zzeezzy]

Bailly is a much better suited partner for Maguire than Lindelof, Ole just prefers the latter because he's more reliable in terms of fitness and injuries.

Regarding yesterday, Bailly played well and saved a certain goal, I think he's a good defender but he can be over aggressive and a liability in terms of injuries. Wouldn't say he's our answer at this point that's for sure.

The performance generally was disappointing, nice to see Rashford get a goal but honestly we were playing a tired Luton reserve team at that point. You'd expect any player we bring on by then to make a difference.

----

I've still got this nagging feeling we're not going to sign a RW, Woodward already getting the excuses in last UtD programme for Palace game, it's uncertain times and the pandemic blah blah! You've had us in debt from the start pal, don't bring out that BS now.

 

[Theatre of Dreams83]

Don’t worry peeps signings are abreast ??

 

[zzeezzy]

I've even got doubts this board will cough up for Telles because they'll be thinking to themselves save money and sign him for free in January on a pre-contract for next summer.

 

[Sherkey]

Naw, we will sign atleast a LB, if not for anything else but fan backlash. I think we will make 2 more signings, one definitely a LB, the other remains to be seen. Don't think anyone was really confident we would sign Sancho except for ITK journalists. Oh well. Still think there will be 2 incomings, dunno. Maybe sign a CB out of the blue?

 

[Theatre of Dreams83]

Naw, we will sign atleast a LB, if not for anything else but fan backlash. I think we will make 2 more signings, one definitely a LB, the other remains to be seen. Don't think anyone was really confident we would sign Sancho except for ITK journalists. Oh well. Still think there will be 2 incomings, dunno. Maybe sign a CB out of the blue?

Yeah I’m in the same boat 2 more at least

 

[Vanjagl]

A bit off topic, but I've been playing a United save on FM, and at the beginning I edited Avram Glazer to be unhappy and willing to sell the club. And some time later, he did. This is the result:

My new dude fixed United defense in one window.

 

[Theatre of Dreams83]

A bit off topic, but I've been playing a United save on FM, and at the beginning I edited Avram Glazer to be unhappy and willing to sell the club. And some time later, he did. This is the result:

My new dude fixed United defense in one window.

Bit pricey there mate. I got De Ligt for less than that ?

 

[Vanjagl]

Bit pricey there mate. I got De Ligt for less than that ?

I did not do anything, he bought two central defenders at the same time on his own as some promise when he was buying the club. 82m for Gimenez and 80m for Marquinhos. And now I have to wonder what to do with Ruben Dias who I bought for 40.5m ( btw, everything is in euros).

 

[Legend Incredible]

I did not do anything, he bought two central defenders at the same time on his own as some promise when he was buying the club. 82m for Gimenez and 80m for Marquinhos. And now I have to wonder what to do with Ruben Dias who I bought for 40.5m ( btw, everything is in euros).

Ed Woodward would be proud ?

 

[Vanjagl]

Ed Woodward would be proud ?

*Matt Judge.

 

[Scouseinthehouse]

Ed Woodward would be proud ?

Not nearly as 'proud' as Giménez on that financial package. ?