You absolutely get it. You should work at our club in a position of authority.
British Core
- Thread starter devilish
- Start date
Forget the methodology of buying British, it is more a case of can they play in this league. Do they already have experience in this league? Can they go straight into the first team squad? We have bought young talent from Portugal (Dalot) and Holland (Chong, Fosu Mensah) And France (Martial) It doesn't always guarantee success. They need time to get used to this league. A Maddison or a Chilwell can play from day 1, and they are better than what we currently have. This is why these sorts of deals make perfect sense. We need to re-build, but we also need to compete in the here and now.
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I suppose they are better than what we have but what is their ceiling? If he doesnt improve then I'm not sure we should be spending £60m on maddison, I like him as a player but I don't think hes top quality yet.
Its usually a good barmometer to assess whether other top clubs are sniffing around a player. At the moment its us and Arsenal (top 4 hopefuls at best), maybe that is his level too.
Great post
Totally agree with this, really not bothered where they come from what we do need is players who hit the ground running, Bailly, Lindelof, Fred have all taken time to settle which United and especially Ole can't afford next season.
Buying proven in the league would be a plus (although it didn't quite work out with Sanchez).
Fergie always bought well as he seemed to be a lot more in depth, him and Gill when it came to players, their personalities, their requirements, they basically new when they signed that they would hit the ground running and improve the first team instantly (Schmeichel, Johnson, Stam, Evra/Vida took 6 months, Ole, Kanchelskis etc.), loads of examples but he always new in advance what we were signing, every aspect of their lives.
At the moment we have lost that, we just sign players on reputation or bloody you tube videos or whatever, hopefully (fingers crossed), Ole goes back to how Fergie decided on a player.
Totally agree buying from our league is near on impossible as everyone is rich and no one needs to sell, pointless selling one of your top players for under 50m as they don't need the money.
We will see what comes but the British lads we have aren't exactly setting the world alight at the minute are they, just having players with the right work ethic and attitude will be a start.
None of this J-Lingz sh*t that we have to put up with because he gets one assist every 60 games.
Top post btw
Where a player is from is, or at least should be, irrelevant.
They just need:
1. To be a good footballer
2. Have a good attitude / be professional
This 'British Core' rubbish is ... rubbish. Yeah, of course it's nice to have some 'home grown' talent in the team but unless the players actually grew up united fans it's is ridiculous to think a players' love / loyalty towards our club is any different based on where they were born.
They just need:
1. To be a good footballer
2. Have a good attitude / be professional
This 'British Core' rubbish is ... rubbish. Yeah, of course it's nice to have some 'home grown' talent in the team but unless the players actually grew up united fans it's is ridiculous to think a players' love / loyalty towards our club is any different based on where they were born.
That is your view. Other views out there. One is that players who play for their home country teams behave differently and can be more settled there.
Busby babes.
Fergies class of '92.
Ole's brits.
Fergies class of '92.
Ole's brits.
Their loyalty may not be different but the chances of them leaving due to our climate or integrating with our culture way of life is much less and so you are more likely to retain a core team. Surely this is fairly important factor during a major rebuild? You don't need all British players but you want to build around a core that are more likely to want to stay.
The CO92 were commonly known as ‘Fergie’s Fledglings’
Dont really have a problem with going for a British core. A lineup of:
De Gea
Wan Bissaka Maguire Lindelof Shaw
Rice
Tielemans Maddison
Sancho Rashford Martial
While being hilariously brexit fc and only have 3 foreign players in the 11 would still look like a really balanced side IMO and offer creativity, control, potential, work rate, whatever. The problem is when we go for domestic players just because they arent foreign, even though they arent good enough.Wan Bissaka Maguire Lindelof Shaw
Rice
Tielemans Maddison
Sancho Rashford Martial
Henderson, Wan-Bissaka/Aarons, Smalling, Shaw, McTominay, Lingard, James, Rashford, Greenwood are players I expect to be here for a few years in terms of our British players while being part of a first-team squad set up. I think it'll be difficult for most of them to keep places down in the first 11 or even 18 a lot of the time though. Longstaff could be another one added, maybe Rice and then of course there's the 'dream' signing in Sancho. I'm not sure we're going to get a 'British core' from this group though, but I could be wrong. Maybe we find a British CB who is a baller (I don't think Maguire is the guy but we'll see), with Henderson taking over from de Gea, Rashford turns into a 30-goal striker and Rice/McTominay end up dominating the holding midfield role. It's possible, but unlikely IMO.
Would only accept British core strategy if it was spearheaded by Sancho.
I don't disagree, it's just that players who only stay for 3 - 4 years but make huge contributions during that time shouldn't be discounted.
I agree but I’ve seen more from McTominay than Rice. Some decent players who may or may not cut it in Garner, Gomes and Greenwood who should fight for a chance.
I think the point of the British core is to try to build a team that can gel well, understand and champion the new culture we are trying to build and also be already somewhat used to a physical and energetic system.
It’s no secret that the PL is a physical league and English players are trained to be physical. This will help when we try to introduce a more hard working and fitness focused system.
In terms of the other stuff, it’s just about identity and consistency. Our team is such a mish mash of so many different ideas, styles, cultures, qualities that it just doesn’t come together at all. If we rip it up and start again we want to this time to have some consistency when we actually rebuild.
Have a core of players who share similarities and can gel well and take on a shared style and image of the club and help us build that. In the end it doesn’t even necessarily need to be British really, if we wanted a more technical style maybe we build around Spanish players but obviously as we’re an English club, due to the homegrown rule and also the style we want to adopt I think English players makes sense. Also it seems like Ole has identified specific English players he wants and so that helps, i don’t think we’d do this if the players of the right style and quality weren’t there
It’s no secret that the PL is a physical league and English players are trained to be physical. This will help when we try to introduce a more hard working and fitness focused system.
In terms of the other stuff, it’s just about identity and consistency. Our team is such a mish mash of so many different ideas, styles, cultures, qualities that it just doesn’t come together at all. If we rip it up and start again we want to this time to have some consistency when we actually rebuild.
Have a core of players who share similarities and can gel well and take on a shared style and image of the club and help us build that. In the end it doesn’t even necessarily need to be British really, if we wanted a more technical style maybe we build around Spanish players but obviously as we’re an English club, due to the homegrown rule and also the style we want to adopt I think English players makes sense. Also it seems like Ole has identified specific English players he wants and so that helps, i don’t think we’d do this if the players of the right style and quality weren’t there
There’s a SunManUnited Twitter ffs.
How many first team players have we actually, in real life, lost because of climate or not "integrating with our culture"?
Seems like quite an important statistic if this is the justification for a transfer policy.
Ole's doing Brits
Although he refuted it later I always think of Ian Rush's excuse for failing in Italy(@ Juventus) when the issue comes up on foreign players not settling when he said that he failed to settle in Turin because it was like living in a foreign country.
That's all good and well on paper but you do realize that the facts strongly disagree with the picture you're painting here. By analyzing the first xi of the three teams that dominated the PL in the last few seasons we get:
City: 2 Brits (Walker/Sterling), 2 Brazilians (Ederson, Fernandinho), 2 French (Laporte, Mendy), 2 Belgians (Kompany, KdB), 1 Argentinian (Aguero), 1 Portuguese (Bernardo) and 1 Spaniard (Silva).
Liverpool: 3 Brits (Alexander-Arnold, Robertson, Henderson), 3 Brazilians (Firmino, Fabinho, Alisson), 2 Dutch (Wijnaldum, Virgil), 1 Egyptian (Salah), 1 Senegalese (Mane) and 1 Cameroonese (Matip).
Chelsea (their successful campaign under Conte): 1 Brit (Cahill), 2 Belgians (Courtouis, Hazard), 3 Brazilians (Willian, Diego Costa, Luiz), 2 Spaniards (Azpi, [Irrelevant point]), 1 Nigerian (Moses), 1 French (Kante), 1 Serbian (Matic).
That's 6/33 British players starting for the three most successful clubs in the PL during the last 3 seasons. That's also 7 different nationalities for City and Chelsea and 6 for Liverpool just in the starting lineup. So, the conclusion seems to be that: a) good coaching assisted by good scouting is more important for team identity and consistency than having players who speak the same language, who are used to the English weather and who know how to drive on the left-hand side. b) You don't need British players in order to build a hard-working side that can press like hell and run up & down the pitch like crazy. If the plan provided by the manager bears fruit, the players follow their instructions and they remain generally happy where they are.
Don't get me wrong, the basic idea of yours has some merit and you also admit that it doesn't necessarily have to be a core of British players. I believe that what happened with Ronaldo has skewed the views of many United fans. Let's not forget that Fergie's last title-winning sides had the likes of Evra, De Gea (Edwin), Vidic, Rafael, Nani, Valencia, Chicharito, RvP and Park in very important roles. These are all players who have spent lots of years at United and they have been integral to Fergie's plans. Alongside the Brits of course.
What we lack is a spine. Managers have come and gone, they brought their own players, signed a few superstars but the most basic issue of our squad hasn't been solved yet. Building a backbone isn't about nationality or age. It's about understanding your needs and weaknesses. Had we got Godin (who's a world-class defender in the box), one of the more aggressive/proactive CBs like Lindelof or Bailly would have been eased into the first team better because the leadership at the back would have been a given instead of a desideratum. In this sense what does keeping the English lad, Jones or Smalling, offer? And it would have been much cheaper than paying an insane price for Maguire.
That's just one example. We sign players who end up being on the periphery of the action because we can't get the very basics right. Pogba doesn't want to leave because Madrid is nicer than Manchester and his French sensitivity desires more sunshine. If that was the case, he wouldn't have come in the first place. He wants to leave because while the template of how to get the best out of him was there to replicate (Juventus, France NT), we ended up asking of him to do everything on the pitch: Recieve the ball on the edge of our box and be a deep-lying play-maker, then find the spaces in the attacking half and play as a #10 while we moan about his lack of runs in the box too. If you, or anyone else, believe that by signing Rice and Longstaff these problems will go away, i'm sorry to say it but you're in for a surprise. And it won't be a nice one.
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I agree with pretty much everything here. I think people are going overboard with this British thing. It’s just a preference, i don’t think it’s a necessity. If we sign British players it’s because that’s what Ole thinks will help, no doubt you don’t need a core of British players to be successful. In the end the more similar the players are the easier it is for them to gel and given we have the worst team chemistry of any team of all time it makes sense that we’d go super back to basics. Literally make every move to optimise team chemistry and players gelling.
Getting this chemistry thing right is 1000% more important than anything else. So I can definitely see the logic in wanting British players. People who argue this I think are people who are expecting us to get back to success soon but you have to forget that. We are so messed up as a club that the whole thing needs to be ripped apart and started again. We need to train these guys what it means to be a team and getting as homogenous a group of guys as possible will just help with that. That’s it. There’s no more science to it than that
Owle's Owlets?
Longstaff, McTominay, Lingard central midfield is a thing of nightmares.
Ole thinks this is Football manager.
Spot on. We are in a bit of a mess and out of champions league. Why would the type of player who could move to Real, Barca, Munich etc choose us right now? Not hunger for success most likely cash the biggest factor. So it is a catch 22, we are man utd and we want and can afford the top top players but the only top top players who would in their right mind want to come here right now, come for the money. We need a team with character, identity, leaders, humour, never say die attitude etc. and so we need the best young hungry players who want to prove something and be part of something. It does not have to be all British but for stability and character I think we do want a core of British players
having a British core is all very well providing they are actually decent players. When I consider our last 'British core'
Neville, Rio, Scholes, Carrick, Giggs, Rooney, Fletcher and compare them now to Young, AWB, Smalling, Jones, Shaw, McTomminay,James, Rashy, Linzy
Then you can clearly see why we finished 6th
Neville, Rio, Scholes, Carrick, Giggs, Rooney, Fletcher and compare them now to Young, AWB, Smalling, Jones, Shaw, McTomminay,James, Rashy, Linzy
Then you can clearly see why we finished 6th
Relegation beckons
Yeah. That team would genuinely finish about 14th in the league. Forget LVG and Jose's cockups in the market,if we back Ole to cobble together a team like that it would set us back a good ten years with our current owners/board. We'd need a Saudi takeover and a complete gutting of the entire team over two transfer windows.
That is not the team though, is it ?? Or do people like you just like to forget reality just to have a moan about an hypothetical scenario that is far from true.
I do think there's some truth in British players feeling more settled in the PL than anywhere else, meaning they are less likely to start demanding 3 times their worth as soon as a foreign club comes in and makes them a huge offer. There has been plenty of cases where British players have signed contract extensions when they could have earned more money abroad.
But a foreign player is more likely to behave in whatever way is necessary to force a big move abroad if an insane offer comes in, which can unsettle a club.
I think a player is more likely to have the required focus, if he and his family are feeling settled in England, and hope to be there long term.
But a foreign player is more likely to behave in whatever way is necessary to force a big move abroad if an insane offer comes in, which can unsettle a club.
I think a player is more likely to have the required focus, if he and his family are feeling settled in England, and hope to be there long term.
This is very true. If you look at Italy, Spain and Germany, the same could be said of their players. It’s only France, The Netherlands, Sweden etc where the leagues are not as strong that you see a lot of players moving.
Buying British is the right thing to do so long as they are in the top 1/2 options for that position. They know the Country, the League and are more likely to see a big British Club as the top of the tree career wise.
Most successful teams around Europe have a number of players from their Country in it and that allows them to have a level of consistency when rebuilding - we could now have 10 yrs of Shaw and Wan Bissaka if they are good enough, same with Rashford and if we got Sancho. Look at Barca with Xavi,Iniesta, Pique, Puyol etc. They only ever had to change 4-5 players as the Spanish ones were always content and consistent.
British players got paid more than their south american or european counterpart. Players in serie a got paid much less than epl
British core will work their ass off to win the ball back but won't be creative enough to break defences on the ball.
It's a naive approach to just stick to one policy while signing players.
It's a naive approach to just stick to one policy while signing players.
You don't think players like Sancho, Maddison and Rashford are creative? Looking at other clubs you have Sterling and Hudson odoi.
There are definitely creative, British players.
I never understand people against a club choosing to have a competent core of native players native to the country they are based. 9/10 times such clubs ate more successful overall.
I like Solksjaer's Sonny-Jims.
Or maybe Baby Face's Baby Faces?
Ole's Larvae?
Gotta be Solksjaer's Squirts.
Good thing is we dont have to line up with 11 British players or 11 foreigners. Just mix it. If it is 3 or 5 or 7 isnt important, as long as they are good enough and perform.