Some great speculation in this thread as to who where and when and many good ideas in terms of possible imports imho.
But
@Mani's statement is key. Whats in Jose mind?
Jose inherited a) a handful of good youngsters, b) a couple of experienced & "quality" senior citizens, c) some decent, reliable squad players to which he
has added a) a strong young CB, b) an aging superstar CF and c) two predominantly right-sided "midfield / attack-minded" players in Pogba & Mkhi.
Jose has brought a mentality that he has expressed as a desire to win everything and to do it the "Man Utd way!"
The players he's brought in are now more or less bedded into his 1st - 11 and also part of "alternative 11's". He has carefully & dare I say skillfully, rotated the rest of the squad in and around them, with greater or lesser success, but
all (virtually) unbeaten for ages!
With the many combinations Jose's tried or is trying,
all seem to have in common a
willingness and ability to make & create scoring chances. Some stats specialist can tell us exactly how many, but I believe we're in the bottom 3 for converting good chances
and yet among the top in terms of chances created?
If our scoring percentage was even average or slightly better than that, we'd be in real contention for the title (as well as everything else) despite all the supposed shortcomings the team has!
What's my point?
Well, first credit Jose for doing an amazing job with what he's got to work with! We're still in four competitions (assuming top 4 is a "competition) and this, as mentioned, despite all our supposed "weak links" and under-performing talent?
A finished chance here or there would have made a world of difference to our league position!
But even if we were sitting in second;
Darmian would still be just an "Okay" defender, Shaw would still be "struggling for confidence", Blind would still be "too slow", Jones would still be "too injury prone", Smalling would still "not be able to pass it well enough", Rojo would still be "too rash", Valencia would still "have to cross better", Martial, Rashford (& others including Lingard) would all still "have to mature", Rooney would still be "too fat" & even Ibra, like Carrick, would still be too "old" ... and yet here we are in a Wembley Final, the last 16 in the FA Cup, the last 32 in a Euro competition and i with a good shout for 3rd or 4th place!
Our arguments about who we should buy for the left or right side is moot for me. To win everything (our goal under Jose) we need to be many things & play in many ways. Mainly we just need a handful (6 tops) of players who are just a "little better" than some of the ones we have now, and not necessarily superstars who will cost too much or just not leaving where hey are! Or maybe keep working with some of the ones we have and help them get better ... which I think Jose & his coaches will do!
To win the premiership needs one approach, while winning the Champions League requires another. Something SAF you may remember, found extremely challenging and a puzzle he regrets to this day not being able to solve consistently!
Jose is planning to build a squad that can/will win everything! To accomplish that he needs a truly
deep squad, not a small very expensive one. But what I think he understands is that he needs to build two teams with potentially two distinct styles; One that includes real width and pace and another more narrow from which to mount counter attacks. Yes Griezmann looks like a cert but I think there's a half dozen players, more like Bailly in the £30M range who Jose will have his eye on to upgrade his squad not completely revamp it.