Who is to blame for our appalling/shambolic transfer decisions?

[Wumminator]

Varela

Fellaini

Mata

Herrera

Shaw

Di Maria

Falcao

Blind

Milinković-Savić

Fosu-Mensah

Valdes

Depay

Rojo

Darmian

Schweinsteiger

Schneiderlin

Romero

Martial

Bailly

Ibra

Mkhitaryan

Pogba

Lindelof

Lukaku

Sanchez

Matic

Fred

Dalot

Grant

—————

Look at these signings. Just fecking look at the scumbags. I hate pretty much every one.

But a lot of these players were signed having previously played for our managers/coming from the manager’s own country.

Fellaini/Matic/Dalot/Lindelof/Schwienstiger/Depay/Blind/Ibra fit that description. They were clearly signed by the managers, not the club.

The two signings who seem to be sent in by the club are Herrera/Shaw. Arguably two of the better signings.

We’ve heard reports since that our scouts have recommended some fantastic young talents, these requests have been ignored.

Are the board to blame or the managers? How much autonomy should Solskjaer have?

 

[Rozay]

We never signed Milenkovic-Savic ffs.

 

[FootyGirl88]

The board/Woodward they just spend money without a long term vision or a plan, when you're building a house you don't just build it as you go along you follow the plan/design. It's the same thing when you're building a team you don't just buy players there needs to be a long term plan and structure. This is where we've been going wrong.

 

[Offside]

When manager after manager starts doing shite you have to look at who the common denominator is. As you’ve send we’ve been through endless players and managers and find ourselves getting schooled at Everton same as we did 5 years ago. So who is the common denominator since 2013? Ed Woodward. He’s a clown and needs to admit he isn’t fit to run a football club.

However, the problems started before 2013 I think because we don’t have the best owners. Bar an incredible RVP season United have been on the slide since that Summer of 2009. We never replaced the players we lost that summer and have never been as good since. We were too tight around then and relied far too much on Fergue’s genius. Hence it’s bedlam once he’s gone.

However, you can’t blame the Glazers too much given the silly amount of money we’ve spent since Fergie left. It’s time we get a proper footballing person in charge of the club and back Ole to pick proper United players not these jokers we currently have. Then things will change. We’re still the biggest and best club in the league by a country mile.

 

[bucky]

We never signed Milenkovic-Savic ffs.

We did. It's his brother. He is a goalkeeper.

 

[luke511]

There's a massive blindspot when it comes to our recruiting and that's the importance of consistency.

Fred being a example, when technical consistency was the thing we lacked the most in our squad and midfield, we sign a guy whose level swings from good to bad to good to bad every time he touches the ball. This was visible issue in his game when he was at his previous club, so why didn't our scouts pick up on this and out a big red cross through his name?

We have too many players that aren't technically consistent, and if you throw them all in the same team it ends up being a disaster on occasion. We need proper footballers again that can do the basic stuff incredibly well.

 

[NoLogo]

We never signed Milenkovic-Savic ffs.

Yeah I was like "when the feck did that happen?"

Then I read further down and was like "oh this guy, okay, didn't really notice him much."

 

[Bubz27]

We never signed Milenkovic-Savic ffs.

We had his brother in the youth team.

 

[Infra-red]

Ed Woodward, defacto DoF since 2013. What a time to be alive.

 

[Reddy Rederson]

woodward.

 

[Wumminator]

When manager after manager starts doing shite you have to look at who the common denominator is. As you’ve send we’ve been through endless players and managers and find ourselves getting schooled at Everton same as we did 5 years ago. So who is the common denominator since 2013? Ed Woodward. He’s a clown and needs to admit he isn’t fit to run a football club.

However, the problems started before 2013 I think because we don’t have the best owners. Bar an incredible RVP season United have been on the slide since that Summer of 2009. We never replaced the players we lost that summer and have never been as good since. We were too tight around then and relied far too much on Fergue’s genius. Hence it’s bedlam once he’s gone.

However, you can’t blame the Glazers too much given the silly amount of money we’ve spent since Fergie left. It’s time we get a proper footballing person in charge of the club and back Ole to pick proper United players not these jokers we currently have. Then things will change. We’re still the biggest and best club in the league by a country mile.

Can’t the common denominators be... shit football managers in all fairness?

 

[Champagne Football]

On the bright side, we will go back to trying to bring in Fergie type signings this summer and that might just get us back on track and a new DOF will arrive also going forward.

If we can land Sancho and Rice, that's 2 Fergie type gems right there. On top of that if we can perhaps take a punt on Tielemans or Kovacic in the hope they can turn out to be good enough then that's midfield sorted if it works out. Then we simply need an experience CB such as Koulibaly, Skriniar or Maguire.

If Pogba leaves then bring in Bruno Fernandes.

If we can have a good window then Ole can turn this around. Get rid of the greedy-guts and bring in a new hungry group.

Sancho
Rice
Tielemans
Bruno Fernandes
Skriniar

 

[soaphroniscuss]

On the bright side, we will go back to trying to bring in Fergie type signings this summer and that might just get us back on track and a new DOF will arrive also going forward.

If we can land Sancho and Rice, that's 2 Fergie type gems right there. On top of that if we can perhaps take a punt on Tielemans or Kovacic in the hope they can turn out to be good enough then that's midfield sorted if it works out. Then we simply need an experience CB such as Koulibaly, Skriniar or Maguire.

If Pogba leaves then bring in Bruno Fernandes.

If we can have a good window then Ole can turn this around.

Sancho
Rice
Tielemans
Bruno Fernandes
Skriniar

Sancho is a massive gamble and at a price that makes him a very unlikely SAF signing. How many expensive young unproven players did SAF sign from overseas? Ronaldo maybe, relatively speaking. That's it.

 

[Wumminator]

Sancho is a massive gamble and at a price that makes him a very unlikely SAF signing. How many expensive young unproven players did SAF sign from overseas? Ronaldo maybe, relatively speaking. That's it.

Nani
Anderson
Ronaldo
De Gea

 

[ravi2]

Sancho is a massive gamble and at a price that makes him a very unlikely SAF signing. How many expensive young unproven players did SAF sign from overseas? Ronaldo maybe, relatively speaking. That's it.

SAF tried to sign Lucas and bid a huge amount for him then PSG outbid us, even SAF could see times were changing.

 

[spiriticon]

25% manager, 25% CEO and 50% the scouting team.

I mean, what ARE the scouts doing to recommend players this inconsistent?

 

[Mal donaghy]

On the bright side, we will go back to trying to bring in Fergie type signings this summer and that might just get us back on track and a new DOF will arrive also going forward.

If we can land Sancho and Rice, that's 2 Fergie type gems right there. On top of that if we can perhaps take a punt on Tielemans or Kovacic in the hope they can turn out to be good enough then that's midfield sorted if it works out. Then we simply need an experience CB such as Koulibaly, Skriniar or Maguire.

If Pogba leaves then bring in Bruno Fernandes.

If we can have a good window then Ole can turn this around. Get rid of the greedy-guts and bring in a new hungry group.

Sancho
Rice
Tielemans
Bruno Fernandes
Skriniar

All sounds brilliant , but this isnt Fifa (EASports) , its man United in the transfer market, we get low balled whilst selling, and pay over the odds when buying, so we ain't gonna buy anyone truly, and I mean truly World class

 

[Champagne Football]

Sancho is a massive gamble and at a price that makes him a very unlikely SAF signing. How many expensive young unproven players did SAF sign from overseas? Ronaldo maybe, relatively speaking. That's it.

He's as sure as a sure bet can be. He has the pace that Mkhitaryan and Memphis never had to cut it in the PL. Like Foden/Hudson Odoi/Rashford, he's a rare talent and a cut above the other kids his age.

I think his signing would be comparable to when Fergie bought Rooney, Keane, Lee Sharpe etc Amazing young players who knew what it meant to play for Utd unlike similarly talented foreigners who don't share the same feelings and who might only stick around for a few years before flirting with Madrid etc

 

[ti vu]

When manager after manager starts doing shite you have to look at who the common denominator is. As you’ve send we’ve been through endless players and managers and find ourselves getting schooled at Everton same as we did 5 years ago. So who is the common denominator since 2013? Ed Woodward. He’s a clown and needs to admit he isn’t fit to run a football club.

However, the problems started before 2013 I think because we don’t have the best owners. Bar an incredible RVP season United have been on the slide since that Summer of 2009. We never replaced the players we lost that summer and have never been as good since. We were too tight around then and relied far too much on Fergue’s genius. Hence it’s bedlam once he’s gone.

However, you can’t blame the Glazers too much given the silly amount of money we’ve spent since Fergie left. It’s time we get a proper footballing person in charge of the club and back Ole to pick proper United players not these jokers we currently have. Then things will change. We’re still the biggest and best club in the league by a country mile.

Agree with most you had to say, except the bolded part.

They allowed Woodward to be installed and maintained in this position all this time. Woodward with the lack of football understanding has shown, he worked with Glazers best interest in mind: money making. This influences our signings, contract renewal in many cases, which unsettling the dressing room. Managers ain't the ultimate decision makers anymore, which basically underthrew the culture SAF built and maintained all these years. Rooney's contract was the start. Look how it was so difficult to manage and finally rid him. Doesn't look like Woodward ever learnt and done differently since.

Only Glazers have the authority to at least demote Woodward, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[sideshow_bob]

Fergie is to blame for signing shite like young, Smalling, Jones etc & continually underinvesting. Excellent in so many ways, but he was a specialist in signing crap players (& forced Moyes upon us!)

Ed is to blame for not hiring a DOF after he could clearly see we were selling several players LVG bought & were sacking managers at a fast rate.

Our managers are to be blamed for identifying poor targets.

Our scouts are to be blamed. All 50 plus of them deserve the fecking sack. Real bunch of shite.

 

[Di Maria's angel]

What about Saidy Janko?

 

[Champagne Football]

All sounds brilliant , but this isnt Fifa (EASports) , its man United in the transfer market, we get low balled whilst selling, and pay over the odds when buying, so we ain't gonna buy anyone truly, and I mean truly World class

I completely agree. I think we'll have our A list which is the ones I mentioned. Maybe the B list, who are far more likely to come than anyone on the A list, would look something like this
Zaha
Joachim Andersen
Ndidi
Doucoure

 

[Stookie]

It’s a shit show from top to bottom. Woodward is about as much use as tits on a fish. I feel sorry for Ole, he genuinely loves the club but he’s going to get crucified and eventually blamed for the shite that’s on the pitch.

 

[anant]

Going by just the major signings and classifying them into manager and club signings:

Manager:
Fellaini
Rojo(?)
Blind
Schweinsteiger
Valdes
Romero
Depay
Ibra
Mkhi
Lindelof
Dalot
Lukaku
Matic

Club:
Mata
Herrera
Shaw
AdM
Falcao
Schneiderlin(?)
Martial(?)
Darmian(?)
Pogba
Bailly
Alexis(?)
Fred

Compare the success of the 2 groups, nearly all our managerial signings have been flops! The club on the other hand has made comparatively better decisions. Its our managers going for short termism that has resulted in this mess

 

[Massive Spanner]

Sancho is a massive gamble and at a price that makes him a very unlikely SAF signing. How many expensive young unproven players did SAF sign from overseas? Ronaldo maybe, relatively speaking. That's it.

Fergus would have paid whatever the feck he had to to get the best young English player out there.

 

[Champagne Football]

Fergie is to blame for signing shite like young, Smalling, Jones etc & continually underinvesting. Excellent in so many ways, but he was a specialist in signing crap players (& forced Moyes upon us!)

The thing is that when he left us as champions, you can bet your last dollar that had he stayed another year, then he most certainly would not have ended up at the end of the transfer window with only Fellaini to show for his efforts.
He would have signed the likes of Christian Eriksen who went from Ajax to Spurs that summer for peanuts, and Tiago Alcantara who was about to sign for us but Moyes kept dithering and panicking until... Pep swooped in at the last second to snatch him.

 

[montpelier]

It's a list that is replete with whoppers whoever you want to blame. Goes back further for me too.

 

[ivaldo]

You're right. Grant is a right cnut.

 

[Keefy18]

Managers & Woodward

 

[sideshow_bob]

The thing is that when he left us as champions, you can bet your last dollar that had he stayed another year, then he most certainly would not have ended up at the end of the transfer window with only Fellaini to show for his efforts. He would have signed the likes of Christian Eriksen who went from Ajax to Spurs that summer for peanuts and Tiago Alcantara who was about to sign for us but Moyes kept dithering and panicking until Pep swooped in at the last second to snatch him.

I'm not as sure as you that Fergie would have gotten the signings of Eriksen & especially Thiago across the line. Thiago has had chances to come to the EPL for bucket loads of cash but he's refused so far.

Anyways, before I get my head chewed off in here, i am only criticizing Fergie's talent ID & reluctance to spend more. In almost all other aspects, he was the man!

 

[Keefy18]

The thing is that when he left us as champions, you can bet your last dollar that had he stayed another year, then he most certainly would not have ended up at the end of the transfer window with only Fellaini to show for his efforts.
He would have signed the likes of Christian Eriksen who went from Ajax to Spurs that summer for peanuts, and Tiago Alcantara who was about to sign for us but Moyes kept dithering and panicking until... Pep swooped in at the last second to snatch him.

I'm not so sure about that, Ferguson was woeful those last few years with transfers. He became stubborn and hated agents and we missed out on Kompany, Silva and Hazard....

We may not of ended that summer with just Fellaini your right but I'm not sure how great it would of been either.

 

[Champagne Football]

I'm not as sure as you that Fergie would have gotten the signings of Eriksen & especially Thiago across the line. Thiago has had chances to come to the EPL for bucket loads of cash but he's refused so far.

Anyways, before I get my head chewed off in here, i am only criticizing Fergie's talent ID & reluctance to spend more. In almost all other aspects, he was the man!

He left a bottomless pit of cash for Moyes and advised him to hold onto the backroom staff. It wouldn't have mattered if Moyes had landed Ronaldo and Bale that summer, once he ditched the backroom staff he was finished. It was basically Tony Pulis in charge of Barcelona, once he ditched all that knowledge of how to run a winning machine whilst playing the right way at the same time.

 

[SirAF]

Varela

Fellaini

Mata

Herrera

Shaw

Di Maria

Falcao

Blind

Milinković-Savić

Fosu-Mensah

Valdes

Depay

Rojo

Darmian

Schweinsteiger

Schneiderlin

Romero

Martial

Bailly

Ibra

Mkhitaryan

Pogba

Lindelof

Lukaku

Sanchez

Matic

Fred

Dalot

Grant

—————

Look at these signings. Just fecking look at the scumbags. I hate pretty much every one.

But a lot of these players were signed having previously played for our managers/coming from the manager’s own country.

Fellaini/Matic/Dalot/Lindelof/Schwienstiger/Depay/Blind/Ibra fit that description. They were clearly signed by the managers, not the club.

The two signings who seem to be sent in by the club are Herrera/Shaw. Arguably two of the better signings.

We’ve heard reports since that our scouts have recommended some fantastic young talents, these requests have been ignored.

Are the board to blame or the managers? How much autonomy should Solskjaer have?

Love it

 

[Djemba-Djemba]

You can go further back than the Summer of 2013 and it's still mostly shite.

Ashley Young and Phil Jones and Smalling Obertan and Bebe, Michael Owen etc.

This all started in the Summer of 2009 when we had Ronaldo and Tevez both leave the squad and instead of going out and buying top quality to replace them we took the cheap option and brought in a total nobody in Obertan, a well past his best Owen on a free and the Wigan winger.

We continued to miss out on quality players but because we had a miracle worker in Fergie we were fine, then since then we've had to spend hundreds of millions to try and catch up.

Only problem is we've spent it fecking appallingly. It's a huge depressing mess.

 

[Jed I. Knight]

We have no structure or strategy or vision in place for our player acquisition strategy, and it is painfully obvious. We operate on a model that kinda, sorta makes the manager an all powerful figure at the club, but then you have the guy employing the manager, who clearly has no football acumen whatsoever beyond securing sponsorship deals (for proofs see our wage bill and the above list) frequently overruling the manager and making his own decisions about which players to buy and retain.

I think we were all happy enough that Woodward didn't sanction the purchase of Rakitic and a sale of Martial. But, when you operate on a model that gives the manager the responsibility for assembling the squad without the necessary power to actually do so, you can't really be surprised when you end up with a completely mismatched group of players. Especially when the guy making the actual decisions has no football clout.

 

[Smores]

Moyes and Van Gaal in particular have talked about targets they were told were coming in by Woodward that never did. I imagine it's a bit of both, if you think our scouts are sat there with no input and those managers were lying about Woodwards claims then i think that's head in sand.

Obviously much more convenient to just blame ex staff though. Stop moaning caftards

 

[Keefy18]

You can go further back than the Summer of 2013 and it's still mostly shite.

Ashley Young and Phil Jones and Smalling Obertan and Bebe, Michael Owen etc.

This all started in the Summer of 2009 when we had Ronaldo and Tevez both leave the squad and instead of going out and buying top quality to replace them we took the cheap option and brought in a total nobody in Obertan, a well past his best Owen on a free and the Wigan winger.

We continued to miss out on quality players but because we had a miracle worker in Fergie we were fine, then since then we've had to spend hundreds of millions to try and catch up.

Only problem is we've spent it fecking appallingly. It's a huge depressing mess.

This, a million times this.

It's been a scatter gun approach for years at best.

 

[wolvored]

We never signed Milenkovic-Savic ffs.

I ws just looking down that list and was going to say that.

 

[wolvored]

He left a bottomless pit of cash for Moyes and advised him to hold onto the backroom staff. It wouldn't have mattered if Moyes had landed Ronaldo and Bale that summer, once he ditched the backroom staff he was finished. It was basically Tony Pulis in charge of Barcelona, once he ditched all that knowledge of how to run a winning machine whilst playing the right way at the same time.

Agreed. He is/was a big headed bleeder who thought it was a sideways step from Everton and it would be a piece of piss to just do as he pleased and it would work out.

 

[Offside]

Agree with most you had to say, except the bolder part.

They allowed Woodward to be installed and maintained in this position all this time. Woodward with the lack of football understand has shown he worked with Glazers best interest in mind: money making. This influences our signings, contract renewal in many cases, which unsettling the dressing room. Managers ain't the ultimate decision makers anymore, which basically underthrew the culture SAF built and maintained all these years. Rooney's contract was the start. Look how it was so difficult to manage and finally rid him.

Only Glazers have the authority to at least demote Woodward, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Well yes I’d agree with that.