comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
Thing is our next three games are Brentford away, Chelsea away and Liverpool at home. Theirs are Burnley at home, us at home and Sheffield United away. That 8 points could disappear quite quickly, and Spurs at Stamford Bridge is as close to a guaranteed three points for Chelsea as any fixture in football.
But that’s beside the point anyway. We’ll be battling to stay in Europe until the end of the season, but my point is that I wouldn’t mind it we don’t qualify for the reasons already given.
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I won't lose any sleep over missing out on EL anyway.
The only issue is we finish in Conference League and that would be disastrous and embarrassing for us in equal measure. Still need to keep a big squad for it and winning it means Europa League qualification 😂
There will still be people saying stick with Erik if we do lose the next three no doubt and end up 8th.
Difference with the Conference League is that it’s such a weak competition that we could trim the squad of senior players and beef it up with some academy players.
Ashworth has a monumental task on his hands that's for sure.
I could definitely see 2-3 years out of the CL now being a big possibility for us. Too many errors in the market has finally caught up with us.
You say that every year and then we qualify after dropping out for a season. As had as we are we’re never too far away from qualifying for the CL because the floor of the squad is usually good enough to still qualify for Europe. The major issue is how far it is off challenging for the biggest titles, not finishing in the CL places.
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 9 seconds ago
You say that every year and then we qualify after dropping out for a season. As had as we are we’re never too far away from qualifying for the CL because the floor of the squad is usually good enough to still qualify for Europe. The major issue is how far it is off challenging for the biggest titles, not finishing in the CL places.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The quality of the squad has never been this poor though. We are an absolute mess and look certain to lose 2-3 of the most high profile and experienced ones.
I suppose the fact we might keep 5 places for the CL and that could help our cause but I'm not confident this is going to be a quick fix personally.
It's going to take some summer from the club to get things back on track that's for sure.
And we hear that every time we have a bad season, then we make some signings and, or, get a new manager and things look different the following season. It’s really not that difficult for us to finish in the top four because it only needs a few things to change, usually not having horrific injury issues like we’ve had in seasons that have gone to shiiiiit. The issue is building a squad to compete with the very best, not get in the CL.
I've read somewhere in terms of FFP we'd be better off keeping Varane for a year and selling Maguire.
As for the squad I don't think it's terrible as such but when we lose our key players it kind of falls apart. IMO we therefore need to ensure we have the right profiles in the squad to not have to change our style too much when we have players out.
Other teams seem to pick up bargains so hopefully we can start to do that too. Even look at the free transfer market for one or two. I reckon we get linked to Rabiot again in the Summer!
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
My view is that we probably need to accept that building a job that can challenge for big titles is a medium-term project (3-4 seasons away at least). If we really want to get to that destination as soon as possible, it involves taking decisions that will hurt us more in the short term. One of United's many mistakes over the Woordward era was impatiently trying to short-cut to success with silver bullet signings. In 2014 or 2016 no one wanted to think we'd take several seasons to build back to a title challenging side, but I bet in retrospect we all wish we'd taken that approach then.
In that context, Varane is an example of players who clearly aren't going to be around when we next challenge for the title and who don't really have the attributes to start the journey towards playing a more coherent type of football, but whose quality and experience can be helpful in the meantime. Personally, I would advocate moving such players on sooner rather than later, to accelerate the rebuild, in the knowledge that the young player who replaces him will sometimes perform at a lower level next season.
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 7 hours, 26 minutes ago
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m sure all of Maguire, AWB, Lindelof have 1 year left.
Then you have Verane and Martial expiring, Casemiro wages need freeing up.
With a new team behind the scenes and possibly a new manager, I don’t think we can expect too much this season.
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 8 hours, 9 minutes ago
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't disagree. There's loads of players I think we can move on that won't really have much of an effect as well because they never play even when fit.
It'd be great if we could somehow strike lucky and find 3/4 players over the Summer who make a real difference to the first XI. They don't necessarily have to be expensive either. Just the right fit.
I suppose we just don’t know what our transfer policy is going to look like right now also. I think we need to get rid of some of our experienced players due to their lack of reliability, but I hope it’s not something we’ll just ignore as part transfer policy moving forward. I know they’re an extreme case, but look at Chelsea with their awful policy of just signing young players.
Tottenham got their first choice GK, CB and RB for around £80m last summer and all have done very well this season. I’m sure there are far better suited players out there, we just lack the structure in place to identify and buy them.
At least we got Mount for £60m a year before he was available for free.
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
Tottenham got their first choice GK, CB and RB for around £80m last summer and all have done very well this season. I’m sure there are far better suited players out there, we just lack the structure in place to identify and buy them.
At least we got Mount for £60m a year before he was available for free.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep forgetting mount "plays" for us
Something I noticed from Ole's appearance on The Overlap, is that managers don't neccisarrily get the players they want at the club. By all accounts he pushed hard for Haaland to be told no, and we couldn't convince Jude Bellingham.
Maybe ETH didn't demand the transfers like Antony (who by all accounts we wanted under Ole too) and Mount.
Haaland and Bellingham are 2 of the biggest talents in the game, it was always highly unlikely we were ever gonna get either.
I’m pretty certain EtH had a big influence on buying Antony (as well as many other players, it’s not a coincidence we’ve bought so many players EtH has previously managed). Haven’t read anything saying Ole wanted Antony, only that the club scouts valued him at £25m but according to Ole the club scout thousands of players, we just don’t seem to know what to do with all that data.
Of course they don’t, top players are obviously going to turn us down because we are shiiiiit.
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 2 hours, 11 minutes ago
Of course they don’t, top players are obviously going to turn us down because we are shiiiiit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Varane, Casemiro, Onana are / were considered top players when we signed them.
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Varane
Page 4 of 4
posted on 13/3/24
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 2 minutes ago
Thing is our next three games are Brentford away, Chelsea away and Liverpool at home. Theirs are Burnley at home, us at home and Sheffield United away. That 8 points could disappear quite quickly, and Spurs at Stamford Bridge is as close to a guaranteed three points for Chelsea as any fixture in football.
But that’s beside the point anyway. We’ll be battling to stay in Europe until the end of the season, but my point is that I wouldn’t mind it we don’t qualify for the reasons already given.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I won't lose any sleep over missing out on EL anyway.
The only issue is we finish in Conference League and that would be disastrous and embarrassing for us in equal measure. Still need to keep a big squad for it and winning it means Europa League qualification 😂
There will still be people saying stick with Erik if we do lose the next three no doubt and end up 8th.
posted on 13/3/24
Difference with the Conference League is that it’s such a weak competition that we could trim the squad of senior players and beef it up with some academy players.
posted on 13/3/24
Ashworth has a monumental task on his hands that's for sure.
I could definitely see 2-3 years out of the CL now being a big possibility for us. Too many errors in the market has finally caught up with us.
posted on 13/3/24
You say that every year and then we qualify after dropping out for a season. As had as we are we’re never too far away from qualifying for the CL because the floor of the squad is usually good enough to still qualify for Europe. The major issue is how far it is off challenging for the biggest titles, not finishing in the CL places.
posted on 13/3/24
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 9 seconds ago
You say that every year and then we qualify after dropping out for a season. As had as we are we’re never too far away from qualifying for the CL because the floor of the squad is usually good enough to still qualify for Europe. The major issue is how far it is off challenging for the biggest titles, not finishing in the CL places.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The quality of the squad has never been this poor though. We are an absolute mess and look certain to lose 2-3 of the most high profile and experienced ones.
I suppose the fact we might keep 5 places for the CL and that could help our cause but I'm not confident this is going to be a quick fix personally.
It's going to take some summer from the club to get things back on track that's for sure.
posted on 14/3/24
And we hear that every time we have a bad season, then we make some signings and, or, get a new manager and things look different the following season. It’s really not that difficult for us to finish in the top four because it only needs a few things to change, usually not having horrific injury issues like we’ve had in seasons that have gone to shiiiiit. The issue is building a squad to compete with the very best, not get in the CL.
posted on 14/3/24
I've read somewhere in terms of FFP we'd be better off keeping Varane for a year and selling Maguire.
As for the squad I don't think it's terrible as such but when we lose our key players it kind of falls apart. IMO we therefore need to ensure we have the right profiles in the squad to not have to change our style too much when we have players out.
Other teams seem to pick up bargains so hopefully we can start to do that too. Even look at the free transfer market for one or two. I reckon we get linked to Rabiot again in the Summer!
posted on 14/3/24
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
posted on 14/3/24
My view is that we probably need to accept that building a job that can challenge for big titles is a medium-term project (3-4 seasons away at least). If we really want to get to that destination as soon as possible, it involves taking decisions that will hurt us more in the short term. One of United's many mistakes over the Woordward era was impatiently trying to short-cut to success with silver bullet signings. In 2014 or 2016 no one wanted to think we'd take several seasons to build back to a title challenging side, but I bet in retrospect we all wish we'd taken that approach then.
In that context, Varane is an example of players who clearly aren't going to be around when we next challenge for the title and who don't really have the attributes to start the journey towards playing a more coherent type of football, but whose quality and experience can be helpful in the meantime. Personally, I would advocate moving such players on sooner rather than later, to accelerate the rebuild, in the knowledge that the young player who replaces him will sometimes perform at a lower level next season.
posted on 14/3/24
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 7 hours, 26 minutes ago
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m sure all of Maguire, AWB, Lindelof have 1 year left.
Then you have Verane and Martial expiring, Casemiro wages need freeing up.
With a new team behind the scenes and possibly a new manager, I don’t think we can expect too much this season.
posted on 14/3/24
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 8 hours, 9 minutes ago
We need to replace Maguire and Varane.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't disagree. There's loads of players I think we can move on that won't really have much of an effect as well because they never play even when fit.
It'd be great if we could somehow strike lucky and find 3/4 players over the Summer who make a real difference to the first XI. They don't necessarily have to be expensive either. Just the right fit.
posted on 14/3/24
I suppose we just don’t know what our transfer policy is going to look like right now also. I think we need to get rid of some of our experienced players due to their lack of reliability, but I hope it’s not something we’ll just ignore as part transfer policy moving forward. I know they’re an extreme case, but look at Chelsea with their awful policy of just signing young players.
posted on 14/3/24
Tottenham got their first choice GK, CB and RB for around £80m last summer and all have done very well this season. I’m sure there are far better suited players out there, we just lack the structure in place to identify and buy them.
At least we got Mount for £60m a year before he was available for free.
posted on 14/3/24
comment by manutd1982 (U6633)
posted 1 minute ago
Tottenham got their first choice GK, CB and RB for around £80m last summer and all have done very well this season. I’m sure there are far better suited players out there, we just lack the structure in place to identify and buy them.
At least we got Mount for £60m a year before he was available for free.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Keep forgetting mount "plays" for us
posted on 14/3/24
Something I noticed from Ole's appearance on The Overlap, is that managers don't neccisarrily get the players they want at the club. By all accounts he pushed hard for Haaland to be told no, and we couldn't convince Jude Bellingham.
Maybe ETH didn't demand the transfers like Antony (who by all accounts we wanted under Ole too) and Mount.
posted on 14/3/24
Haaland and Bellingham are 2 of the biggest talents in the game, it was always highly unlikely we were ever gonna get either.
I’m pretty certain EtH had a big influence on buying Antony (as well as many other players, it’s not a coincidence we’ve bought so many players EtH has previously managed). Haven’t read anything saying Ole wanted Antony, only that the club scouts valued him at £25m but according to Ole the club scout thousands of players, we just don’t seem to know what to do with all that data.
posted on 14/3/24
Of course they don’t, top players are obviously going to turn us down because we are shiiiiit.
posted on 14/3/24
comment by Kobbie The King Mainoo (U10026)
posted 2 hours, 11 minutes ago
Of course they don’t, top players are obviously going to turn us down because we are shiiiiit.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Varane, Casemiro, Onana are / were considered top players when we signed them.
Page 4 of 4