Three games makes sense considering it will be a 2 week break after that.
Does make you wonder if they aren’t sold on Conte mind.
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He will be able to sign a pre-contract in January, which makes me suspect getting him re-signed has not been the highest possible priority at ManU anyway. He has essentially no transfer value, he is already earning just shy of £300k/week. My suspicion is that Raiola is using this story as damage control to preserve Pogba’s market value, and fully intends to have him leave in June.
Pogba wanting 500k/week puts Salah’s rumoured demands into perspective. Even if Salah doesn’t score, at least you get more than 15 minutes for your money.
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Or vice versa. Conte isn’t a guy who is going to insist on absolute control, but he will demand that if he doesn’t have that control, the sporting director who does is someone he respects and shares the same fundamental plan. He left Juventus after three titles over that kind of disagreement, left Inter after a title on the same basis. The longer he talks to ManU, the more questions he’ll have. When exactly is Woodward leaving? What exactly is Ferguson’s role as a director at the club? Who has been making the transfer decisions?
As he asks those questions, I suspect some parties at ManU are going to become less keen on him.
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There was a really good point made on a podcast I listened to. The problem is money. They have too much of it, are too dependent on it, and are therefore obliged to keep it rolling in by feeding the commercial beast. That leads them to signing players like Pogba and Ronaldo - players who are firstly a social media presence with shitloads of followers, secondly a footballer.
There are calls for them to have a strategy, a plan around their football. But that’s always going to be secondary to the commercial side. They will have to play Ronaldo because they have invested a huge amount of money in him, not as a player but as a brand and a content provider.
And this highlight the difference between the two clubs. Liverpool are obviously a very wealthy club, but not in the same bracket as Utd. In order to compete we’ve been forced to stick rigidly to a plan, wringing every last drop out of the money we do have. We’ve had to be smart - the recruitment has had to be laser sharp and everyone has to be on the same page.
I’m not sure where United go from here. The model just seems wrong. A sensible thing to do at this point is probably to write off the next three seasons, and a fuck of a lot of the money wasted on players, and allow a young, modern manager like Ten Hag to build a lean, hungry squad. But I can’t see that happening, because I don’t think the Glazers see long term success as the priority.
I think they might be fucked, y’know.
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I was about to add that, I don’t think it particularly bodes well.
They had no plan to sack him and I don’t think they even had a plan to do that until last weekend.
This club doesn’t move on til it moves on.
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I loved the reaction of the Utd fans saying he was one of the few players they have who would get into our side. Fucker (rightly) cannot even get into their side for big games.
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I have to scratch my head to think when he last did it for Man Utd, I remember a Spurs game a few seasons back but that’s about it. I think he was ok in one of ours but if I’m honest I feel like your going back to WC 2018
I really enjoyed his advert on Sky, half an hour after his abject 15 minute cameo that ended with him being sent for an act of thuggish petulance. Not quite the association that Adidas were probably hoping for when they booked that slot.
My own reflection on it was to hope it didn’t make too many young lads hopeful of a career in football think they have to behave like this bellend.
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Fuckin’ell 
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choked on my whiskey there
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Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Caf every second post is, ‘we have one of the best squads in the world.’
The thread linked immediately above is like the AA meeting…some are finally experiencing their moment of clarity.
So many lols, so little time.
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Where do you see him going ?
I think he was meant to have had a good game against Leeds this season - but Leeds were by all accounts pretty atrocious, and appear to be suffering from second season syndrome.
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And that, right there, is the one reason I think it could still happen. My read on Conte is that he is as pragmatic as Ancelotti, but as combative as Mourinho. His read on the situation might be ‘these people are clowns, but what is the worst that could happen?’. The ManU gig is now firmly established as a lucrative ticket to nowhere, the way Real was maybe 12 years ago. Conte might think the worst thing that can happen is he spends a season and half there, and the Glazers fund that villa on the Amalfi coast he has been thinking about. In the meantime, maybe he can take a run at doing what he wants to do, and see if the Glazers are ready to throw the hierarchy to the wolves before they throw him.
A critical part of that calculus is that it isn’t obvious where else he might go.
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One of the depressing realities about top level team sports is how few of the top players really care about winning. They might all think they want to win, but when it comes down to it, they are well enough paid that the difference between kind of trying and really committing to the sort of consistent excellence that is required to win in such a competitive environment just isn’t worth it to most of these players. Many of these players likely don’t even know the difference, but it means there is a very large market of outrageously talented players who are ok with just being ok.
So when you think about that from a commercial perspective, it’s actually a risk to try to win. If you’re a marketable franchise and you just purchase ready made stars who are marketable then you don’t need to win. But if you pass up stars and go for the right players, they are rarely going to be as marketable unless they make you win stuff. Basically, from a financial perspective there are a lot of risks with applying sound sporting principles in an attempt to actually try to win.
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I had to look it up. West Ham away last year.
Of course it was just another flash in the pan.
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I don’t think that is true. It is secondary at Utd because they are run poorly by owners that only really care about the money and so have neglected the other facets. It doesn’t need to be that way, and at some point probably wont be.
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I this this is what Liverpool have done exceptionally well - we have recruited driven, ambitious players. The depth we go to on character is well known, but I think it’s actually key to being as successful as we are. Klopp has built a team of winners.
Mo Salah is a role model of this. He is absolutely at the top of the tree right now. But he still looks for improvement and small margins all the time.
It presents a bit of a challenge as we look at refreshing this team. I think there is going to be some pressure to replace our world class players with other world class players, forgetting that the current lot became world class on our books.
I thought Ronaldo’s performance on Sunday was perticularly interesting. When I say performance, I don’t just mean football. It was a performance designed for social media consumption. The stern looks. Standing aloof and apart from his teammates. The contemptuous shakes of the heads. All designed to show the world that this isn’t acceptable to Ronaldo, and he is being let down by these planks around him. It was a master class in how to carry yourself on a pitch when you are losing and you want to make it absolutely clear it isn’t your fault.
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The beautiful thing about all the current problems at United is that they can be traced back to Ferguson.
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