N'Golo Kante

I think he would be a good squad player, but i dont know if we would sign 3 midfielders this window?

FDJ
New DM
Kante

I would ship out McTominay and make this happen.
 
Complete waste of time and we need to stop being a feeder club for Chelsea's cast offs, would have thought we would have learned our lesson from how they underwhelmingly have turned out and are now both leaving for free.

Same will happen with kante, pay over the odds in transfer and wages for a player on a downward trajectory with injuries mounting up with each one just speeding up the process of him being a complete spent force and will have 0 re-sale value
 
Ideally, we should be looking for the next Kante, but our scouting is shite. But why wouldn't you take him for a cut price
 
Can't believe some people would reject 2/3 years of Kante. Even if he's past his peak, he's still miles better than what you guys have right now.
Only worry is his injuries, he seems to miss a lot of games recently .
 
(...) said:
Can't believe some people would reject 2/3 years of Kante. Even if he's past his peak, he's still miles better than what you guys have right now.
Only worry is his injuries, he seems to miss a lot of games recently .
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It isn't a question of Kante versus what we have right now.

It's a question of Kante versus any other defensive midfielder we could sign instead.
 
Not a good idea. We need to rebuild this team with a long term vision for once. Kante was (and still is when healthy) exceptional, but its way too late.

Let's at least try to find the next one, ey?
 
He’s 31 and seem to be in decline both in terms of performance and injuries. Can we stop with these short-term solutions?
 
Now that Ed is finally gone, can we please stop with this nonense. There is no world where Kante gets better from here on out. We need to be buying players that will be good for >4 seasons because we can only afford 3/4 a season, and we need at least 12 in the next few years.

I'd much prefer a player slightly worse but at 22/23 who can not only develop but whose legs won't go in a season or two. Remember Matic? I swear his legs worked for exactly a month for us, then he was a liability for 3 years.
 
The idea that you don’t show interest in or buy players at Kante’s age just because of some wider issues with recruitment strategy in the past is ridiculous logic.

It’s a case by case basis. We buy players like Amad and Pellistri and people get upset that we waste money when it could spent on the here and now. We bring in somebody like Kante and people get upset that this is too short term.

Kante would walk into our midfield, and as long as he was supplemented by a younger midfielder that can get his foot on the ball and play a little then our midfield would be significantly improved.

Aren’t we all sick of watching dogshit like McTominay? Further to this, where are the alternatives in this position?
 
If we sign Kante we will go on to win the league.

It's not any sort of footballing sense that's telling me just unbridled superstition. Think it was in the alchemist that it's said:

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.
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Kante's first season with a premier league team:
1. Leicester - title
2. Chelsea - title

3...
 
Kag said:
In short, there isn’t one.

If the club could go out and bring in Declan Rice then it would. Other than that, I’m struggling.
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Sheer weight of numbers tells us there will currently be multiple midfielders across Europe who will at some point over the next decade make their way to a top level side and prove to be good enough. You just have to be able to identify them now. So yes, there is not only one but multiple ones.

Of course you're struggling. Again, you're not a club with an extensive scouting network. We're not limited to signing players you or I can name. That doesn't stop us from being able to say an aging and injury-prone Kante is a bad signing. There's no onus on us to name an alternative.
 
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Some fecking rebuild that is where we sign a 31-year-old injury prone player. Chelsea wouldn't be selling him if they believed he's still got it at this level. Instead they are going to off load him to the Manchester United Retirement Home and use the funds to buy the next Kante.

The more things change the more they stay the same with this club.
 
Good player but past his best and turning 32 this season. No thanks.

Chelsea will probably buy somebody like Bissouma with the money and take him up a level.
 
This club is like 5 years late on everything. Out of all the young talented midfielders/ball winners France is producing currently you chase Kante on the decline. Kamara was there and available but no let's choose the 31 year old injury prone one.
Also Fred > Kante for the last 3 years but it don't fit the narrative.
 
Signings like him show how poor our scouting is actually. Just sign a proven player who is on decline.
 
Tuchel won't sell him.Forced to use him not fully recovered during December January period because of kovasic injury and COVID issues. If not for sanction, he would be already signed new terms with us.
 
sullydnl said:
It isn't a question of Kante versus what we have right now.

It's a question of Kante versus any other defensive midfielder we could sign instead.
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That's exactly it. It's not a choice between Kante and nothing. There are other players that we can sign. We should be looking for a younger player. The goal should be to find the new Kante.
 
Legendary player but at this age he could struggle in keeping with ETH's tempo.

Could be prestigious backup, mostl likely be great for dressing room... still torn on this. We could really use some fresh energy talents with monster mentality in the making.

Is scouting department already considering plan B options or this is exactly what we're aiming for here, which is Frenk & Kante as a new midfield ?
 
He's had bad injury problems every season for the past 3 or so years, but for those former two years when he has come back he was excellent, mostly in the big games. This season he's had injury issues but when he's played he's been more miss than hit unfortunately. He's also on £290k p/w so United would be taking on another player on huge wages. I don't know much about ten Hag but if United move towards a more possession based side I don't see this move making much sense. When you were a counter attacking side? I'd take the risk 100%.
 
Canagel said:
This club is like 5 years late on everything. Out of all the young talented midfielders/ball winners France is producing currently you chase Kante on the decline. Kamara was there and available but no let's choose the 31 year old injury prone one.
Also Fred > Kante for the last 3 years but it don't fit the narrative.
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That last sentence, don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to assume it’s a joke?
 
Tuchel himself summed it up recently when he praised Kante but said only having him fit for 40% of the games was a massive problem for Chelsea.

Why buy in that same massive problem? I'd rather have a DM who will never be as good as peak Kante but is available for 95% of games this season than a peak Kante available for 40%.

Because with a DM signing the issue isn't just a quality one (i.e. improving the standard of player we have in midfield). It's also a compositional one. We've been calling out for a DM specifically because we don't have that sort of player in our team and for every game that DM misses we still wouldn't have that sort of player in our team.

Whichever midfielders we sign should be ones we can set our structure on. Not ones who improve us but only when they're in the team every second game. We need more stability and consistency than that.
 
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sullydnl said:
It isn't a question of Kante versus what we have right now.

It's a question of Kante versus any other defensive midfielder we could sign instead.
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Nicely put and the biggest issue with it is that it looks like we still have no scouting system in place. Reminds me a little of the Varane transfer, great on paper, but hasn't really worked out that way.

I'm not completely against it but I wish we would find a hidden gym somewhere who can improve himself and us. Kante simply cannot improve himself at this stage and so that motivation is gone for him. He has also won it all which is another negative on the motivation front.

If the other three or four signings we will hopefully make however are young players, perhaps lacking in experience, then Kante might make some sense to balance that out.
 
Kaushal said:
Caf told me Fred is better than kante whilst some argued it. Now when kante is older and injury prone and Fred is in his prime he is surely better than kante. Right ?
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Kante is on his way down as an all-action harasser and haranguer of the ball and opposing players - continually using him in this way will only hasten his injuries and degrade his output even more. He'll roll back the years and still have some performances Fred can only dream of per season, but they will not be the norm.

Unless he becomes a sitter who reads the game, conserves energy, and - most importantly - his body, consecutive games and runs of form are going to be a big ask.

Fred isn't better than Kante, but he is likely to be a much more reliable fixture than him; what you no longer can demand of Kante is to go out there and completely influence the game, it may happen, it may not, but it's not the default anymore. It's not prudent to factor Kante as a perennial starter anymore because he most likely won't be - he can be out for vital, season-defining runs of games, or even just be not up to par because he's not able to find his form so quickly after return from injury. Fred most likely doesn't have these issues, yet.
 
One of Ralf's issues was signing older players for short term gain...i have to agree with him and Kante would fall into that category.

Improving the United midfield isn't difficult, there is so many options which would improve the team. No need to take a risk on Kante imo.
 
I remember when the Caf experts told us that Perisic was past it and an awful target when Jose wanted him, since then he's been excellent and looks like Conte now thinks he can do a job at Spurs all these years later. If the manager wants Kante, then I'm fully behind it. I'm surprised there are so many Utd fans desperate to start second guessing ETH already. Kante is also a very decent and humble human being and exactly the sort of player we need in the dressing room after we manage to purge all the clowns with egos bigger than their talent that we've had for too long.
 
Would be a shame not to see Kante and Pogba together

Kante in Mctominay out would be like the reverse of when Valencia replaced Ronaldo
 
shaky said:
I remember when the Caf experts told us that Perisic was past it and an awful target when Jose wanted him, since then he's been excellent and looks like Conte now thinks he can do a job at Spurs all these years later. If the manager wants Kante, then I'm fully behind it. I'm surprised there are so many Utd fans desperate to start second guessing ETH already.
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Who says we're second guessing ETH? We know he doesn't have sole control over the transfers at this club, just a say in them. Which may well see him acquiescing to club signings he isn't overly keen on due to limited alternatives as presented to him by the club, as previous managers like LVG told us he had to. It doesn't follow that just because we're interested in or indeed sign a player that he was one ETH was overly keen on or that it's a reflection of what he actually wanted us to do in the transfer market.

You mention Perisic but we could equally point to Cavani, a player who was barely able to play due to injury issues in just his second season at the club and has added to our transfer issues this season as a result. A signing Rangnick reportedly pointed to as an example of the sort of short-sighted approach we shouldn't be taking in the transfer market.

These are the mistakes we were supposed to be learning from, yet some people seem keen to make them again for the sake of another aging injury-prone player with name recognition value.
 
RuudTom83 said:
One of Ralf's issues was signing older players for short term gain...i have to agree with him and Kante would fall into that category.

Improving the United midfield isn't difficult, there is so many options which would improve the team. No need to take a risk on Kante imo.
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Yeah curse all those old short term players that Ralf Ragnick signed….
 
I wouldn't mind him if we settled on a shortish contract - 2 years ideally, or a 2 + 1 deal at most.
 
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