If we don’t sign anyone this window it shows the club lacks ambition

What has been the common denominator in the awful performances, recruitment, overpayments, appointments and media briefing bullshit. Come on down Ed Woodward, until he is relieved of anything to do with the football side of club, expect nothing and you will be right.

The Glazers are a non sporting brood of misfits who have no passion or ambition for the football club, other than dividends and increased value, so haven't put any pressure on the chinless wonder, welcome to Woody world and he's not as smart as the one in Toy Story
 
It's the winter window. We have an average manager in charge. So I don't particularly care about whether we sign anybody in this window (unless Sancho definitely will move as he's freaking great).

I'm more interested in us spending big in the summer and most importantly replacing Ole with the right manager. Little January toys will mean feck all under a manager who isn't good enough.
 
Because of bad planning in summer we are now in the position where we need to buy midfielders for the first team in January. Always harder to get players in January and for them to settle in immediately is also a tough ask. It's taken Fred over a year to get up to the speed of the league.

Woodward needs to go. Fans need to ramp up pressure on him. Make it abundantly clear who the main problem is at the club. We are fecked under him with Ole, Poch, Rodgers, Ten Haag whoever comes in etc.

He's absolutely clueless. Woodward for Strangeways!
 
Skills said:
Mental. Imagine if real industries worked on that principle.

And the most successful club in the history of european football, pretty much changes managers every season. We need to get over this obsession with managers - just get one who does a job. Then once he stops being effective, feck him off and get a new one.
Click to expand...


We have tried that for best part of a decade . It doesn't work especially when our club hasn't got the correct footballing structures in place
 
Tel074 said:
We have tried that for best part of a decade . It doesn't work especially when our club hasn't got the correct footballing structures in place
Click to expand...

No we haven't though. We've had a disastrous past 7 years, and we've ONLY been through 4 managers.

The club would've been in a much better position, if they were proactive :

  • Sacked Moyes after about 3 months - we probably would've scraped top 4 and wouldn't have had to aggressively gut the squad under Van Gaal
  • Sacked LVG in the second summer because Klopp was available
  • Sacked Mourinho after his second season and rather let him burn the entire house down, and write off all of last season for that reason
If we did either of those things, our mess would be much easier to deal with.
 
If the club are sure that Ole is staying, we need to invest a lot in Jan to give ourselves the best chance of top 4.

If the club are thinking about making a change in the summer then spending lots of money on players the new manager might ditch is probably not the best idea
 
I'd say the board is targeting Grealish and Rice to complete the rebuild. Neither will be possibly available till the summer. Garner will be seeing first team football next season.

What's the point in signing Boubakary Soumare or Emre Can now, when they won't be needed as much after the summer?
 
Champagne Football said:
I'd say the board is targeting Grealish and Rice to complete the rebuild. Neither will be possibly available till the summer. Garner will be seeing first team football next season.

What's the point in signing Boubakary Soumare or Emre Can now, when they won't be needed as much after the summer?
Click to expand...

Getting into the champions league so that players actually want to sign for us for a reason other than money?

Grealish and Rice might have better offers that can give them that
 
BlueHaze said:
As long as Woodward operates as our "DoF" it's safe to say the club lacks any sort of ambition. As much as I think Ole is blatantly obviously the wrong fit things will never truly drastically change as long as a quality DoF is brought in because ONLY then can we set realistic goals and work towards them with a balanced and well functioning plan put in place.

It's really a simple cycle, one that nearly all top clubs follow.

DoF brings in manager with certain style of play/tactics.

DoF/Manager sign players who would fit into that style.

Only under this recipe will patience be rewarded in the long run and a benefit of working as such is even if you come to the point where a manager needs to be sacked when you are looking for the next one it makes it a lot easier as the candidates looked at will simply be ones who would fit into the idea of how we want to play.

This current strategy of Ed being the main man will never make us compete again. At best we could bring in a manager to steady the ship but to ever compete under such incompetent leadership with complete disregard to any sort of long term plan you can forget.
Click to expand...
Top post, just look at how the Maguire signing unfolded - when Jose who had seen that our CB options needed strengthening suggested him he was shut down, our season imploded before it even begun, we sack Jose and bring in Ole only to spend three months trying to sign the same player our recruitment department rejected just twelve months earlier for 20m more. This episode amplifies how much of a joke we have become under Woodward. Now we are being told we need several windows before this club can be expected to compete at a decent level when Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal and City have so many issues that Leicester fecking City find themselves second in a one horse title race! Unbelievable incompetence.
 
Champagne Football said:
I'd say the board is targeting Grealish and Rice to complete the rebuild. Neither will be possibly available till the summer. Garner will be seeing first team football next season.

What's the point in signing Boubakary Soumare or Emre Can now, when they won't be needed as much after the summer?
Click to expand...

No harm in getting them on a 6 months loan to cover numbers (in Can's case).
 
How do you know it shows a lack of ambition? Have the owners or Ed clarified what is the minimum expectations this season? All i keep hearing is a rebuild is needed. When you consider a rebuild is needed and we only sign 3 players with a net spend of 50meur, that's a poor way to do a rebuild. Club are happy I think with what is going on. The wage bill is coming down and the commercial side keeps running along.
 
red4ever 79 said:
How do you know it shows a lack of ambition? Have the owners or Ed clarified what is the minimum expectations this season?
Click to expand...

I think the poster is talking about from a fans point of view.

It is Manchester United's expectation to challenge for titles, so yes having 2 midfielders in Fred and Matic only and not signing reinforcements show lack of ambition.
 
romufc said:
I think the poster is talking about from a fans point of view.

It is Manchester United's expectation to challenge for titles, so yes having 2 midfielders in Fred and Matic only and not signing reinforcements show lack of ambition.
Click to expand...
I see. Well as fans we expect to be competing for trophies and playing an entertaining brand of football. However, until the owners or Ed clarify what is their expectation we are being pulled along for the mugs that we are. In one year we fired Mourinho for being 6th and not being on course to getting top 4, to a team that needs time for a rebuild 6th place is perfectly fine
 
If we can't find an attainable midfielder better than what we already have then our scouting department is dogshit.

Not every signing has to be a Sanchez/Eriksen huge contract gamble. Surely there is a player we could pick up for 20-30 million that we could sell on in a few years if they don't work out.

Not every signing has to be a Cantona, it's not lacking ambition to sign a Quinton Fortune or John oShea.
 
If we don't sign anyone this window I hope that our matchgoers finally turn and put some proper protests in place.
 
I don't want panic buys but going through a busy next couple of months with the midfielders we have doesn't bear thinking about.

We've too many games. An injury to Fred and we might as well just give up.

They need to do something surely.
 
Ed and the Glazers are happy with the situation and Ed tells the media that we're after X and Y - then X & Y are snapped up by other teams because Ed can't conclude (or does not want to conclude) transfers to look after the Glazers cash.

This will eventually see players not wanting to join us and United being turned into a mid-table team.
 
The excuse we hear for signing no one on January is players aren't available because the season is midway. It's nonsense. Vidic and Evra arrived at OT in January. In South America the season ended 3 weeks ago; but no one at OT is even looking at South American players; despite them costing about half what you'd pay for similar quality players in European leagues. Vidic and Evra are good examples because Ole would never have considered either as they were clearly not good enough for the first few months. My answer to that would be bring them in on loan or short contract if you're not sure of them.
 
Champagne Football said:
I'm all for loan options if we can find one. But finding real quality on loan in January is no easy feat.
Click to expand...

Agreed. But I think Can or even James Rodriguez could be attainable. We have 50 scouts at the club, surely one of them could identify a short team loan solution, or even a loan with a possibility of a transfer in Summer if all works out.
 
Champagne Football said:
I'd say the board is targeting Grealish and Rice to complete the rebuild. Neither will be possibly available till the summer. Garner will be seeing first team football next season.

What's the point in signing Boubakary Soumare or Emre Can now, when they won't be needed as much after the summer?
Click to expand...
Ask the same question to the board of clubs like PSG, Juventus, Chelsea - where they have at least 3 players for every position. When such a club end up with too many they sell one. United need to copy. Begin today by selling one of the 3 senior attacking midfielders: Lingard.
 
Godfather said:
If we don't sign anyone this window I hope that our matchgoers finally turn and put some proper protests in place.
Click to expand...

No chance of that happening. The self proclaimed Top Reds for example would rather see us in the Championship than protest. Alot of our fans deserve this mediocrity if truth be told.
 
Josep Dowling said:
We are using Lingard as a CAM, a player who hasn’t scored or assisted in one year. Are you really telling me we couldn’t sign someone better than him? Or Pereira who couldn’t get game time at Valencia when he was on loan. Or better than Matic who hasn’t played well for 18 months?

Tielemans was available for £40m in the summer. There are the likes of Van Der Beek who can be obtained. Grealish is much better than what we have.

There are plenty of options available. The likes of Matuidi and Eriksen have contracts expiring.
Click to expand...

Aston Villa are selling Jack Grealish why? Aston Villa are in a relegation battle, the price we pay for Grealish is in no way worth the risk for Villa to go down to Championship. He is not for sale for realistic money.
 
Mark Pawelek said:
Ask the same question to the board of clubs like PSG, Juventus, Chelsea - where they have at least 3 players for every position. When such a club end up with too many they sell one. United need to copy. Begin today by selling one of the 3 senior attacking midfielders: Lingard.
Click to expand...
I think even Ole knows now that Lingard days are numbered, but who do you replace him with in January? We've panicked far too often in January before, and ended up with some prized expensive garbage in the form of Alexis and Mata.
 
Well its really hard to buy someone right now. We still dont have DoF and obviously no one knows if Ole would be here next season (I hope he wont be), so club should be really carefull on the market. And of course, our position is not good at all, so players are not motivated to play over here.

Halands might be a clear example, because he didnt have a single reason to come to United and his decision is logical.

Maybe loan might be the best business for us, for midfield or even for striker - f.e. Cavani.
 
No rumours either. This is not going to end well. On the other hand you have Pool getting a player in already
 
Champagne Football said:
I'd say the board is targeting Grealish and Rice to complete the rebuild. Neither will be possibly available till the summer. Garner will be seeing first team football next season.

What's the point in signing Boubakary Soumare or Emre Can now, when they won't be needed as much after the summer?
Click to expand...

Can did a great job with Juventus and Liverpool. It was Sarriball who ruined him. Why spend 60m-70m on Rice whose as good as him at the very most? Are we doing the same mistake as last summer when we spent 130m on a fullback that can't attack and a slight upgrade on Smalling simply cause the manager can't see any talent past the EPL/Molde?
 
JoaquinJoaquin said:
Agreed. But I think Can or even James Rodriguez could be attainable. We have 50 scouts at the club, surely one of them could identify a short team loan solution, or even a loan with a possibility of a transfer in Summer if all works out.
Click to expand...
Last I read, Can was going to PSG in a swap for Leandro Paredes.
Will James handle the cold weather and rough tackles? He mostly failed in Germany. Will he bring a cloud of misery into the dressing room like Di Maria did, when the shit starts to hit the fan?

I think purchasing Sean Longstaff and perhaps a box to box midfielder from the Championship such as John Swift would be far more likely, considering the culture change Ole is so determined to implement.

Ole would clearly love a Rakitic, someone who can make things happen from central midfield, but finding a loan deal for a player of that calibre is very rare.
 
Last edited:
Champagne Football said:
Last I read, Can was going to PSG in a swap for Leandro Paredes.
Will James handle the cold weather and rough tackles? He mostly failed in Germany. Will he bring a cloud of misery into dressing room like Di Maria did, when the shit starts to hit the fan?

I think purchasing Sean Longstaff and perhaps a box to box midfielder from the Championship such as John Swift would be far more likely, considering the culture change Ole is so determined to implement.
Click to expand...

Without a doubt it would be a risk, but right now we have nothing to lose. Our midfield is a complete joke, and could James really do any worse than Lingard?

See PSG are making moves, not making excuses about the market being tough and Liverpool have made a move already. The big clubs get moves done, we just choose to make excuses. The club has had 6 months to line up midfielders as every man and their dog could see it was our weakness, yet here we are struggling and choosing to not do anything about it again. I can't stand Raiola, but what he said about the club is 100% right, as much as it hurts.
 
Where has Garner, Levitt, and Tuanzebe gone. They are the ones that should have got more game time over the Christmas period. We certainly needed a couple of them yesterday.
 
We desperately need Midfielders. at least one of them that can pick a forward pass and create some chances. Like really desperately.

But i will be surprised if we sign anyone. Thats how little faith i have in them to sort the problem.
 
JoaquinJoaquin said:
Agreed. But I think Can or even James Rodriguez could be attainable. We have 50 scouts at the club, surely one of them could identify a short team loan solution, or even a loan with a possibility of a transfer in Summer if all works out.
Click to expand...
Thought James Rodriguez might have been a good shout to try for a loan until end of the season but just read he has only come back from injury just over a week ago.
 
Eric's Seagull said:
Thought James Rodriguez might have been a good shout to try for a loan until end of the season but just read he has only come back from injury just over a week ago.
Click to expand...

He has, but at least he would be fit for the forthcoming fixtures in which he would be of use to us (Liverpool, City etc).
 
Dani Olmo is still available right now. He may re-join Barcelona, but right now it certainly wouldn't do any harm to at least try for him.
 
No idea why I have wasted hours of my life since the Arsenal match trying to find any glimmer of hope in us making the signings we need. Not a minute longer. Please shoot me if I reappear without us being concretely close to signing anyone.
 
JoaquinJoaquin said:
He has, but at least he would be fit for the forthcoming fixtures in which he would be of use to us (Liverpool, City etc).
Click to expand...
As long as he's fit I'd take him. I think the City games are going to be very important as the Carabao Cup may sadly be our best chance of qualifying for Europe next season depending on injuries, form and who we sign in January.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.