Its sad that a bang average player is better than what the kept and bought…
McTominay wouldn’t get near our bench at the moment.
Mazraoui’s been ok I think, and I think Yoro will come good in time. De Ligt isn’t terrible.
The rest, though… yeesh.
It’s also not so much the names, but the combinations and chronology of those moves.
In midfield, they have either too many offensive minded ones or one too many defensive minded ones. The only proper (though when I say proper, he’s not that proven yet) #8 is Mainoo, who is still a kid.
What can you seriously do when you have Casemiro/Ugarte, then a big void, then the likes of Fernandes, Mount (don’t know why they needed him, he clashes with Fernandes and you can fit both in one formation and still not have enough balance), Eriksen (I know he can play deeper, but he’s older and has it’s limits).
Up top, after going big for Hojlund pretty early in his stage of career, they go and get Zirkzee the following summer. Two relatively young, very expensive forwards as package considering where they came from and not ready to be the main guy up top.
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Should be pinned post in Transfer rumors, Who should we buy, Contracts literally all threads where we go crazy when club is seen to be making wrong decisions solely based on not spending crazy money.
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It’s not just the fee that is laughable… they pay them hundreds of thousands of pounds per week on top :0)
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The really worrying thing for them is that when you look at that list, even the ones you think might come good, it has the caveat ‘only if they find a way to get out of United’
The appointment of Amorim is a classic example of how this fish is rotting from the head. He is a system manager. He plays 343 and needs players with specific skills to make it work. United don’t have those players, and also don’t have the money to break up the squad and rebuild it.
Dan Ashworth, the sporting director they very expensively recruited from Newcastle, warned them of this and advised against appointing Amorim. So Sir Jim sacked him at huge expensive and hired Amorim anyway (pressuring him to move mid season). Amorim has stubbornly stuck to his 343, put players in roles they can’t do, and has seen the result get worse than those that got Ten Hag the sack.
It’s really, really bad, but the worst thing is that’s it’s so utterly predictable. These guys are supposed to be industry leaders. They are supposed to be the smartest guys in the room. Why are they so ridiculously, hilariously bad at their jobs?
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I haven’t even seen anyone mention that they’re now apparently trying to recruit some data analyst guy from F1 in the belief his skills are transferable to football (unsurprisingly from Mercedes, which has links with Ineos).
Goldbridge was blowing his top about it the other day lol.
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I dont particularly understand the point Henry is making here given how common it is to see a defender forlornly looking to the lino in the hope they will be bailed out. But the reaction to this is astonishing. Utd fans are losing their shit at it being unfair treatment of a teenager. I assumed he was talking about Amass and said something needlessly spiteful. Instead it turns out it was milquetoast criticism of a 70million quid player who turned down Real Madrid because of lack of guarantees over playing time, but this is supposedly too harsh for a delicate flower like him.
https://x.com/AdamJoseph____/status/1911911001592897847
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I’ve had this idea rolling around my head for a while but havent been able to back it up very well, but on reflection our performance during our supposed wilderness years were far better than treated at the time and Utd’s pathetic flailing is bringing that into focus.
We obviously went backwards quite rapidly under Souness, but every manager after him except for Hodgson, someone whose entire tenure was the result of extenuating circumstances, put together at least one version of a side that was competitive. We had legit title challenges under Evans, Rafa, Rodgers and numerous under Klopp before getting over the line (distinguishing coming second, as with Houllier, from a legit title challenge). We won numerous proper trophies across a range of different managers and had trophies to play for deep into the spring as often as not. Sure we had down periods in that time, but looking back now, with the exception of Roy’s very short period, even our bad years were about par for what is expected of Utd these days. But this stat really drills home the point - we are about to finish 30 points ahead of Utd for a third time in 7 years. Utd only did that to us twice in the near 3 decades of their superiority.
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It’s even better. It’ll be well into the millions.
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It’s not that they’ve been empty-handed since Ferguson called it a day - Europa League, two FA Cups and two League Cups is actually exactly what Liverpool won between 1990/91 and 2000/01 if I’m not mistaken - but it’s the manner in which they won those trophies that makes me think they are still the luckiest side ever and that they will now fluke their way to another Europa League trophy and subsequent CL qualification.
I never paid much attention to points difference, I used to judge the discrepancy between Liverpool and their rivals by the league position, but I was astounded to see the other day that Liverpool have exactly twice as many points as Man United after 32 PL games this season. The best thing about it - and one that I try to savour as much as possible because I don’t know if it will happen again - is that prior to that excerpt of the table being posted here, I couldn’t be bothered to check where they were in the table and on how many points. At the end of 2012/13, maybe you could have convinced me that Liverpool would win another PL title or even two one day but you wouldn’t have been able to convince me that there would be a season where Liverpool would be that much ahead of them in terms of points.
Why so gloom and doom. It’s yanited. Always good for us.
The skills maybe transferable, but how much of the problem at Utd is actually one related to capture and use of data and how much of it is just poor decision making more generally?
On evidence to date since he went to Utd, too much credit might be given to him for being an astute businessman… when in fact, he might just have been lucky enough to stumble upon a product that sells, and has made him an awful lot of money..
Hey, even Del Boy became a millionaire through pure luck but you wouldn’t want him to run your football club :0)
Giggs’ wife and her sisters?
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I don’t get it? Every single defender always looks at the linesman when a goal is scored, especially when its close. Maybe I should of read what you wrote first before watching the clip as you basically said them same thing.
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Rooney has a boner.
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Yeah I was going say they are Rooney’s type.
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