Long-Standing Issues Coming Home To Roost
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
The tide has gone out and we have been caught swimming naked.
Or they are setting up Moyes to be the fall guy. Its strange that both SAF and Gill departed at the same time.
He doesn't need to. He has the ability to be a star. How many players out there are as good as Ronaldo? How many ever will be? Januzaj has the ability to be a top player for us, and he'll help us win things.
I got infracted not long ago for abuse in the football forums for calling you a wanker, so I definitely won't do that again, I'll just point out that my opinion of you hasn't changed since the last time I voiced it.
It has to be said. Fergie left the cupboards bare in midfield. It was an ongoing concern in his final six years or so as manager. His talent and experience and winning know how made up for it but surely he should have known Moyes would suffer with that midfield.
That would have been a very naive move for businessmen to make. They are probably more guilty of trusting the decision on a successor to Fergie than hoping they could find someone who could do things on a budget. For United and for their business model to be successful the club needs champions league football every season. They have to back the new manager with funds to buy better talent. Its counter productive for them not to
Not if the bastards were to sell out in the next year after taking so much cash out of the club already.
It's a capitalist bet Rams. Top 4 is all that matters to these 'business men'/leeches.
Seconded. And to whoever said this squad should be challenging for the title…..lets break it down:
Players good enough for top 4:
DDG
Rafael*
Vidic*
Jones*
Smalling (at cb)
Evans
Carrick
Nani
Kagawa
Januzai
Rooney
RVP*
Welbeck
Hernandez
* players who are or are becoming an injury problem
Players NOT good enough for top 4:
Evra
Rio
Buttner
Anderson
Cleverley
Fellaini (so far)
Young
Giggs
Young, I know I have already mentioned him but he is so shit he gets two spots.
Thats a high percentage of sub standard players, and all of them bar the hair bear were NOT signed by Moyes. SAF really left him with some crap to deal with. And no….I don't care that they won the league last season, in the words of winners like Roy Keane and SAF last season means nothing.
In this poetic metaphor, could we see Moyes as a kind of flounder left gasping for air in the mud?
Ah, you're back. How's it going up there?
Not too badly all in all. Having established base camp, we're pausing for breath and scanning the northern sky for storm clouds before pushing on and making an attempt on the summit's lower slopes.
Cool. We were waving down at you last week, but you were looking the other way and didn't see us. We'll give you a shout again next time we go past. Keep an eye out for us this time, will you. It's rude not to wave back.
Okey dokey
We need a big, big spend and clear out. If done correctly, with 5-6 out and 4-5 in we will be well on track.
But we're talking a Real Madrid style spend there.
But we're talking a Real Madrid style spend there.
This sounds like yet another excuse not to put the blame on Moyes. Fact of the matter is our squad is not that bad and we have dominated the last 7 years. Fully accept we shouldn't be winning the league this season but a drop like this wasn't to be expected
I think if we did bring in 3 or 4 it would be more with a view to next season in mind ala Evra and Vidic, rather than relying on them to salvage the season
As I grew tired of pointing out in the Fergie era, we've spent a lot of money - we just haven't spent well.
Since the summer of 2007, our transfer spending has been (in millions of pounds):
Nani 14
Hargreaves 17
Andersson 20
Tevez 10
PIG 4
Manucho -
Possebon -
Fab and Raf 5
Berbatov 30
Tosic 8
Valencia 16
Obertan 3
Diouf 3
Smalling 7
Hernandez 6
De Gea 19
Jones 17
Young 16
Kagawa 15
RvP 24
Henriquez 3
Powell 4
Zaha 12
Fellaini 28
That lot comes to about £290m. For that huge outlay, we got De Gea and RvP as truly top quality, and Valencia, Rafael and Jones as regulars. City got Toure, Silva, Aguero and Nasri for a little over £100m. Chelsea spent much better as well.
Our transfer market failures have left us with a squad deficient in quality. A lot of money will have to be spent. Judging by his horrible performance over the summer, I have severe doubts that David Moyes is the right man to spend it. My feeling is the Glazers won't sack him, even if we finish outside the top four - so we can only hope he's a better judge of footballers than the incredibly overpriced acquisition of Fellaini would suggest.
@Will Absolute
Which highlights the failure of Value spending.....
City wasted a lot of money but to get the top players like David Silva you invariably have to spend
Which highlights the failure of Value spending.....
City wasted a lot of money but to get the top players like David Silva you invariably have to spend
Moyes doesn't have Fergie's aura or presence on the touch line or at Carrington. Refs were scared of him and this did lead to us getting favourable decisions, no way we don't get a penalty today if Fergie is on the sideline. The players are having to adjust to a new system which takes time we should have seen out a few results which we didn't. That would have had us much closer to the leaders.
Looking at the team, there are a few glaring holes. We won the title of RVP being amazing the first half of the season, we couldn't stop conceding goals. The second half of the season we ground it out. We need a new left back, at least one cm and a quality winger. He needs a few transfer windows to get the players we need. Top 4 may be a stretch this season in all honesty.
Looking at the team, there are a few glaring holes. We won the title of RVP being amazing the first half of the season, we couldn't stop conceding goals. The second half of the season we ground it out. We need a new left back, at least one cm and a quality winger. He needs a few transfer windows to get the players we need. Top 4 may be a stretch this season in all honesty.
How would the amount we've spent comapre with our rivals though? I'm thinking of a team like Liverpool, for example. Pretty sure we'd rank about fifth in terms of average spend over the last few years, or something like that. As one of the biggest clubs in the world, we should probably be willing to spend more than these teams, no? Then you have the Ronaldo money to factor in too.
Aside from the obscene Fellaini fee and Berbatov, none of those signings you listed approach the 30m mark. Are the likes of Bayern, Real and Barca limited in the same way? Low value signings will inevitably lead to a low value squad, there are only so many times you can unearth hidden gems.
There is a difference between spending at the top and spending to get to the top.
We certainly made some bad signings in that list, but most of those we sold for a similar figure after the punts didnt work out, like Diouf and Tosic and that needs to be taken into account. Especially as they barely got any first team chances, so werent standing in the way of people. We essentially took a punt on them, they didnt work out and we got our money back. Not great, not too bad.
Its the big signings that were a bit "toppy". Take £10 million off the Anderson, Berbatov, Young and Fellaini deals each and write off Hargreaves because of his injuries and you've got about what each player was worth. Van Persie still needs to do a bit more this season and the next few to show we didnt overpay for him too.
Its the big signings that were a bit "toppy". Take £10 million off the Anderson, Berbatov, Young and Fellaini deals each and write off Hargreaves because of his injuries and you've got about what each player was worth. Van Persie still needs to do a bit more this season and the next few to show we didnt overpay for him too.
That's how I would put it. The difference between this season and last is you have a different Mgr. I can't understand how most of you don't want to accept that Moyes is killing your season.
RVP? Carrick?
The football this season is eerily similar to last season. The blame that I would put on Moyes is that he hasn't rectified it, but in no way is he the reason for it. As is becoming apparent, he had identified the correct positions that needed to be strengthened in the summer, but whoever was responsible for getting the transfers done failed
Our problems are a combination of loads of things, aren't they? The Gill and Fergie thing for example. Two key people leaving at the same time. Its inconceivable that this was allowed to happen.
The midfield issue has been going on for a long time, and quite frankly, is the biggest indicator of Ferguson mellowing. Anderson wouldn't have lasted 3 years at most, with the Ferguson of the mid nineties. We should have gone out for a quality centre midfielder the moment Hargreaves re-injured himself at Wolves. Then we had another reason to buy a midfielder with Fletcher's illness. We didn't react until it was too late.
Still hopeful of 4th place, but I am getting more and more pessimistic. We're 7th in January. Think about that for a moment.
The midfield issue has been going on for a long time, and quite frankly, is the biggest indicator of Ferguson mellowing. Anderson wouldn't have lasted 3 years at most, with the Ferguson of the mid nineties. We should have gone out for a quality centre midfielder the moment Hargreaves re-injured himself at Wolves. Then we had another reason to buy a midfielder with Fletcher's illness. We didn't react until it was too late.
Still hopeful of 4th place, but I am getting more and more pessimistic. We're 7th in January. Think about that for a moment.
the difference is that last season RVP, Rafael and Carrick were fit. These were our 3 best players. Along with Evans and De Gea their form basically masked how bad the rest of the team was. Valencia, Young, Nani, Anderson and Welbeck were poor. Cleverly and Rooney were average. Vidic missed a lot of games through injury. This season Rio has faded badly. Evra still makes costly mistakes. Young and co. are still poor. An 18 year old rookie has played better than them. Kagawa is inconsistent. Only Welbeck and Rooney have improved from last season's form. Moyes has not covered himself in glory either (Fellaini, poor team selection and tactics) but the fact remains he inherited a poor squad.
Our problems this season as basically exactly the same as last season. Just we haven't had RVP bailing us out at times and the squad is all a year older and the experienced players have all declined as a result or been injured. We really needed to start addressing issues at the start of the season, which we all thought was going to happened initial only for us to get fellani as our sole signing. The problem now is we haven't addressed these problems and have slumped down the table, which means if we want to get back up the table again and fix the issues with the squad it is going to cost even more as we become less attractive compared to a united near the top and playing in the champions league.
A lot of people did complain about our standard of football last seasons as well, they were shouted own by others though. Pundits too were heckled for daring to suggest that Fergie was largely propping the team and the point total was reflection of a weak league rather than the team. i
Problem for Moyes though is that we still easily have a squad good enough to finish top 4. Is our team so bad that we should be losing 4 games at home? No.
Plus, if he really thought that we needed some kind of overhaul then the summer was total botch job.
Problem for Moyes though is that we still easily have a squad good enough to finish top 4. Is our team so bad that we should be losing 4 games at home? No.
Plus, if he really thought that we needed some kind of overhaul then the summer was total botch job.
You can't do a list like that without the outgoings and the wage impact. It's the wages and agent fees on top of the signing on fee that has seen us shy away from paying top dollar for a while now and that's where we're struggling to get in the truly top talents, potential or otherwise. Hazard and Moura were identified as targets for our wings, but we baulked at the fees and they went elsewhere. It's been a running theme for quite some time and even RVP is an anomaly for the fact he came here being a top bracketed talent.
We're going to have to change our policies or scout better for those bargain talents if we're to get ourselves back to par with the best clubs in the world.
We can't blag anybody now that Ferguson has retired, so its conform or find ourselves in big trouble as the star turns we have here get nervous and leave us further in the mire.
Even under SAF, at OT, we were denied some blatant penalties. It's happened many times before.
I agree that the decline of that team has started already under Fergie.
Last season we were very lucky in most of the big games. Take the away games vs. Chelsea, Liverpool and City. We didn't deserve to win those games and were very lucky to get 9 points from them. Normally, we'd have taken 1-3 points there. The table lied, we weren't that good.
Fergie left United with unsettled defence as well. We had world class defenders 2-3 years ago, now they are past it. Vidic, Evra and Carrick will turn 33 this year, Rio - 36. Their successors are good and talented but far from beig world class defensive players.
Fergie left us with a weak midfield, too.
His final mistake was Moyes. It will be very difficult for Moyes to turn it around. I don't think he is good enough. To make a team like Everton hard to beat is one thing, to make a team like United top in the country and Europe is a completely different proposition. The same things that helped him over achieve with Everton hold him back at United. Often what is productive at midtable clubs is counter productive at top clubs.
Last season we were very lucky in most of the big games. Take the away games vs. Chelsea, Liverpool and City. We didn't deserve to win those games and were very lucky to get 9 points from them. Normally, we'd have taken 1-3 points there. The table lied, we weren't that good.
Fergie left United with unsettled defence as well. We had world class defenders 2-3 years ago, now they are past it. Vidic, Evra and Carrick will turn 33 this year, Rio - 36. Their successors are good and talented but far from beig world class defensive players.
Fergie left us with a weak midfield, too.
His final mistake was Moyes. It will be very difficult for Moyes to turn it around. I don't think he is good enough. To make a team like Everton hard to beat is one thing, to make a team like United top in the country and Europe is a completely different proposition. The same things that helped him over achieve with Everton hold him back at United. Often what is productive at midtable clubs is counter productive at top clubs.
Problem with just looking at the transfer fees and comparing direct to City and Chelsea is not taking account wages, signing on fees and agents fees which are astronomical.
Fully accept we made some bad signings, but I imagine the overall fees for Berbatov and Hazard were a lot different.
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Our gameplay and passing is too slow for my liking. We barely seem to hit people on the break anymore. There doesn't seem to be any urgency in our play. When in possession we just move the ball around in midfield and let the opposition maintain its shape, pass it to Valencia and cross our fingers while he smashes the ball into the full back!
Made me wonder if we lack pace or quality so came up with this.
Rafael: Quick, consistent & quality
Evans: Quick, consistent and decent quality
Vidic: consistent, quality but slow
Evra: Quality but inconsistent & slow (or tired)
Valencia: Fast but no quality so his consistency doesn't really matter.
Carrick: Consistent, quality but slow
Cleverley: Not too quick, not enough quality (at least not to play in a 2 man midfield)
Januzaj: decently quick, good quality no consistency (but then again he is a kid so its acceptable)
Rooney: decently quick, good quality & consistent.
RVP: Not too quick, quality but inconsistent this season
Is this good enough to win the league specially considering the people waiting in the wings are far worse so we struggle even more when players are injured.
PS: I might be over-reacting here but I am sure I have decent point in there somewhere..
Made me wonder if we lack pace or quality so came up with this.
Rafael: Quick, consistent & quality
Evans: Quick, consistent and decent quality
Vidic: consistent, quality but slow
Evra: Quality but inconsistent & slow (or tired)
Valencia: Fast but no quality so his consistency doesn't really matter.
Carrick: Consistent, quality but slow
Cleverley: Not too quick, not enough quality (at least not to play in a 2 man midfield)
Januzaj: decently quick, good quality no consistency (but then again he is a kid so its acceptable)
Rooney: decently quick, good quality & consistent.
RVP: Not too quick, quality but inconsistent this season
Is this good enough to win the league specially considering the people waiting in the wings are far worse so we struggle even more when players are injured.
PS: I might be over-reacting here but I am sure I have decent point in there somewhere..
This is spot on.
Fergie spent a number of years papering over cracks. Looking at this side and the position we're in now shows just what a great achievement last years title win actually was. RVP was a quick fix, other teams performed poorly and Fergie worked his magic to wring more from the team.
I've been given stick for suggesting that Fergie was hamstrung in the transfer market by the Glazers - but for me its evidently been the case. Barring RVP the only large investments have been in players like Jones and De Gea - young lads with sell on value and years in the bank to off-set against the fee.
The reality is that this under investment over a number of years is costing us dearly - at a time when a few players are edging over the hill and there is nobody suitable to fit in.
For the record I'm not advocating spending money for the sake of it but its clear where we are lacking and I suspect every right minded fan can see it. There doesnt look like any young players really ready to step in and do a job right now (save for Januzaj who's already in there) so the answer is to spend, and probably spend big. Over the next 2 to 3 transfer windows I can see 7, maybe 8 players coming in - and a fair few moved on.
Hopefully Moyes gets the chance to build his own team - as it is he's been lumbered with a number of squad players, players lacking form for 18 months or so out wide and a number of players edging over the hill. He's been let down badly by the board who seemingly made all the right noises. Time for action now rather than words.
We should finish top 4, and should be fine this season. Fact is, this year was always going to be tough.
But the gap at the top can widen quickly and be difficult to bridge - Liverpool being an example of where you can end up if you dont invest and keep the quality there.