I'm sure there were a few journalists saying that Kagawa was our back up plan.
Shinji Kagawa | Signs for Manchester United
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Kagawa will be our Hazard rebound.
Don't remember reading that and don't remember Sir Alex ever making the effort to get on an aeroplane and speak to a player he's interested in face to face unless he has decided come hell or high water to add that player to his squad.
Sir Alex has always said he's interested in good players when they come on the market and Hazard did. No doubt he thought it was worth a punt. However, his actions in actually going to have a sit down chat with Shinji Kagawa to sell United to him speak louder than any journo's words. He wants Kagawa at Old Trafford and was always going to sign him regardless...
...rightfully so too!
To the Powell thread 
So is Kagawa potential No.7 material or would it be more likely now that it will go to a current squad member, Nani possibly!
I'm not sure I agree. Circumstances change so quickly and why have we waited for Hazard to decide only to, by reports, look set to sign him very soon?
Not saying Fergie doesn't want him, of course he does but say that Ronaldo wanted to return and it would take all of our budget for this summer to do it then I'm sure he would but Kagawa on the backburner. Hazard became available and interested so Fergie wanted to go for him.
More so than Michael Owen was. However it has been pointed out that the number apparently has superstitious connotations in Japan similar to 13 in the west.
feck sake, let us sign him first. And let's not succumb to number discussion in yet another transfer thread.
Kagawa ain't no number 7. I still think we will sign one though.
Dont want him
We'll have to see. Fergie will watch a lot of games and probably talk to quite a few players too, I'm not reading to much into that. We know feck all, but from the outside it does look like he was a backup plan to me.
Didn't Kagawa also say that he hasn't decided what to do yet? Certainly seems no deal is in place yet.
Kagawa looks great in those videos. Would be excited if we signed him.
So long as I keep shouting down my inner racist that's telling me it looks a lot like a highlights reel of Ji Sung Park.
So long as I keep shouting down my inner racist that's telling me it looks a lot like a highlights reel of Ji Sung Park.
Anyone who thinks Kagawa was our backup plan is a fecking moron.
I'd love to see a highlights real of Park making some of these passes
How can you prove that he wasnt?
Can't wait to see the post count in this thread go through the roof now. 
Fergie meeting with him for one.
Anyone care to photoshop Kagawa karate kicking Hazard in the face?
Just for shits and giggles.
Just for shits and giggles.
Considering what Kagawa has done for the German champions two years running, including a great record of goals and assists, I would say he is a step above Park, and I love and rate Park highly.
The club has haggled over the price of a player in the last year of their contract because they know Kagawa has eyes on us. This is the usual way of United proceeding. For example, we underbid for Jones last summer and only raised the bid when Liverpool made clear they would trigger his release clause. In Kagawa's case their doesn't appear to be serious competition so the club are trying to use the guy's desire to move to get him on the cheap.
We haven't put the transfer on the back burner at all. Only yesterday the German press and via them the English press were reporting that we'd had an initial bid of 17 million euro turned down and Dortmund were attempting to get us to pay 25 million euro before they play ball.
I don't understand people saying they don't want Kagawa at United. He's one of the stars in the best Dortmund side since Matthias Sammer and Andreas Moller were playing there. His performances in what many people would argue is the 3rd strongest league in Europe show that he's got all the qualities needed to succeed at Old Trafford and its clear the Boss thinks so too.
He's better than messi.
Remember Cristiano Ronaldo being our back-up plan when we missed out on Ronaldinho.
That went terribly...
That went terribly...
Just because he's Japanese, you think he does Karate?
He doesn't do karate? Ah feck that, I'm out.
Anyone care for a pint of Guinness?
I thought we wanted Ronaldo but a year later to allow him to develop. Other clubs were in for him so we had to act early. I reckon if we got Ronaldinho we would have still got Ronaldo but loaned him back to Sporting
After watching that video..
Kagawa.
Please god, have a heart
Kagawa.
Please god, have a heart
I don't think so.
Otherwise we would've used that £30m Ronaldinho money to bring in a big name.
Ronaldo was the compromise, the gamble.
After watching that video..
Kagawa.
Please god, have a heart
Pretty sure he is our main target atm. The only problem might be if Dortmund refuse to go down from their 20 mio. € they want for him atm.
I hope they can reach an agreement soon.
Then we smile nicely and pay. We paid that for Young. We're not far anyway according to reports.
According to Fergie, we didn't want to bring Ronaldo that year but decided to do so once other clubs were sniffing. He wasn't desiged as a backup plan for Ronaldinho.
Don't know why we can't pay that for Kagawa when we made a luxury buy in the likes of Young. Still till date don't know why we bought him? Hes a good player but still baffles me.
Just found this...so who knows
Ferguson said: "I thought we'd clinched the deal (for Ronaldinho), but when I flew to Paris to speak with him, the goalposts seemed to have moved somehow.
"His people complained that to me that it didn't seem as though they were getting the same deal we'd previously agreed. The next thing I know, he was at Barcelona the following day.
"It was a big disappointment at the time, but we signed Cristiano Ronaldo that very same summer and perhaps we wouldn't have ended up with Ronaldo had we got Ronaldinho.
"We probably would have kept tabs on Ronaldo, though, because we had a precontract agreement with Sporting.
"However, maybe we wouldn't have accelerated the Ronaldo deal in the way we did."
Given that Dortmund signed him for only 350k, that he only has one year left on his contract, and they've already signed his replacement, it seems they're being a bit over-the-top with their stringent valuation. What's their endgame?
Set it too high and we lose interest, and they end up with a player they've already replaced mooching around their squad drawing wages until they lose him for free a year later anyway. They could afford to be greedy if he had more than a year left on his deal, or if they hadn't already bought the player who is clearly his replacement, but with those two factors in place they should be trying to get what they can.
I genuinely hope we don't get desperate after losing out on Hazard and just cave-in to their ridiculous valuation. Kagawa would be a nice addition because he's a talented player, but in my opinion he's not what our squad needs. I don't want us blowing excess funds on him just because we're worried we'll lose out on another target.
Set it too high and we lose interest, and they end up with a player they've already replaced mooching around their squad drawing wages until they lose him for free a year later anyway. They could afford to be greedy if he had more than a year left on his deal, or if they hadn't already bought the player who is clearly his replacement, but with those two factors in place they should be trying to get what they can.
I genuinely hope we don't get desperate after losing out on Hazard and just cave-in to their ridiculous valuation. Kagawa would be a nice addition because he's a talented player, but in my opinion he's not what our squad needs. I don't want us blowing excess funds on him just because we're worried we'll lose out on another target.
Another example of flying to speak to a player face to face he didn't really want to sign?
Sorry couldn't resist.
Another example of flying to speak to a player face to face he didn't really want to sign?
Sorry couldn't resist.
I do think he wanted to sign him, but the availability of Hazard made him switch focus for a bit. He thought something better may be available and waited to see how it panned out. Of course I can't read SAF mind, maybe he wanted both. It just confuses me that we did attempt to sign Hazard but there is seemingly not enough places in the squad to acconodate both (i.e. they both would play in a similar position)So basically if we'd signed Ronaldinho, there'd have been another year of waiting on Ronaldo, who would have torn the Portuguese league apart, and we'd have been up against Real/Barca and everyone for his signature which would have been closer to £30m than £12m, and might have seen us baulk.
Depending on what the "pre contract agreement" was. I know we had links with Sporting but I'm not sure of this agreement was specifically in regards to Ronaldo
Looking back at our previous summer darlings.
Considering instead of:
Benzema we got Owen
Ozil we got Bebe
Sneijder we got no-one
getting Kagawa instead of Hazard would be a massive fecking coup.
Considering instead of:
Benzema we got Owen
Ozil we got Bebe
Sneijder we got no-one
getting Kagawa instead of Hazard would be a massive fecking coup.
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