Frenkie de Jong | The last muppeting lap

Frenkie to United?


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lysglimt

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
 

Murder on Zidane's Floor

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Stumbled across this tweet. This ain’t good news! Apparently Harry Redknapp has been told from someone at the very top at Utd that de Jong wants to go to Chelsea. :( I’m wondering if it’s Fergie who’s told him this.

Well I want to go the AVN awards but we can't always get what we want Frenkie.
 

TheReligion

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
Yeah I agree with that.

Id add FDJ and his agent may well have lied too though.
 

Counterfactual

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I heard from Lee Martin's second cousin, whom I met in a chip shop and who loves mushy peas, that the real Frenkie is handcuffed in a dungeon underneath Barcelona with Mikky and one Curly Wurly per week between them! All it needs to break them out is a key from Laporta which he's flogging for £17m or a carton of mushy peas which, apparently, he loves too!
 

Gavinb33

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Have a feeling Murtough fecked this up
How? he agreed a fee ages ago what more is his role, this is getting ridiculous now we were expecting Barcelona to sort the wage issue out because that is their issue not ours thats not exactly ground breaking.

I'd be sceptical on Chelsea too they've spent nearly £160 million already and FdJ is pushing that to £240+ million and they still need defenders, if this goes through I'd be interested in how they are funding it
 

Seveneric

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ETH insisting on only De Jong and not examining other players as alternatives would be so utterly idiotic and amateurish, that I'm not ready to believe it. No manager (that's not daft) operates that way.
 

Zippycup

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
And so it begins
 

Brownie85

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One of the chiefs at Leeds Utd mentioned today that Raphina to Chelsea was a “done deal”. He said he was sad that he had to go back on his word to Boehly because they’d agreed a deal.

Players will change their mind if a better option comes forward. If Barca didn’t come in late, Raphina would certainly be at Chelsea right now. He wouldn’t have waited indefinitely for Barca to come in one day.
I'm sure i read a report the other day that said Raphinha always wanted to go to Barca and they were always his first choice? Barca convinced him to wait and he did. He must have known long before that they were interested though
 

Massive Spanner

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
I completely disagree.

It's up to the board to set expectations. If they really gave (and are still giving) the manager free reign to go for FDJ despite all the known issues and hurdles there would be towards signing him, and are still persisting with him now instead of putting a stop to it and going for other targets then they're the ones at fault. Too often have we let managers do whatever the feck they want in the transfer window rather than exerting some level of control. Just look at Ole with Sancho first time round.
 

Skills

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
This.
 

1905

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You need to work on positions that need sorting first in my opinion. No point in signing a player just to say "oh look, we can afford big, expensive players" whilst neglecting areas of the squad that need sorting.
Fofana will probably be next as they've been working on it a while now. Then you need a striker too. Thats pretty much an absolute priority i'd imagine
According to our T1s who have linked us to Auba and other forwards, de Jong and Fofana are more urgent and will be pursued before we sign another forward.
 

Chief123

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Even if Utd are now aware FDJ wants to go to Chelsea and is likely to end up there. It wouldn’t be wise to brief to the media that we have pulled out of the deal. Because any new targets price will immediately shoot up. Utd are possibly trying to agree a deal for an alternative before making it public they aren’t after FDJ. Who knows.
 

Witchking

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
Nonsense.
 

BrilliantOrange

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This thread makes me want to fast forward to September 1st, so we can stop muppeting and guessing about it... Hopefully he will be here then...
 

hobbers

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How? he agreed a fee ages ago what more is his role, this is getting ridiculous now we were expecting Barcelona to sort the wage issue out because that is their issue not ours thats not exactly ground breaking.
To negotiate with his agent and make sure the player wants to come. Which he obviously hasn't done.

Not only hasn't he done due diligence he's also failed to plan for the deal collapsing.
 

TheLord

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How? he agreed a fee ages ago what more is his role, this is getting ridiculous now we were expecting Barcelona to sort the wage issue out because that is their issue not ours thats not exactly ground breaking.

I'd be sceptical on Chelsea too they've spent nearly £160 million already and FdJ is pushing that to £240+ million and they still need defenders, if this goes through I'd be interested in how they are funding it
They are selling a few players too. I wouldn't be surprised if Kante is moved out as well.
They don't need RLC, Mount, Kante, Kovacic, FDJ, Jorginho. That's too many quality midfielders.
 

TheReligion

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How? he agreed a fee ages ago what more is his role, this is getting ridiculous now we were expecting Barcelona to sort the wage issue out because that is their issue not ours thats not exactly ground breaking.

I'd be sceptical on Chelsea too they've spent nearly £160 million already and FdJ is pushing that to £240+ million and they still need defenders, if this goes through I'd be interested in how they are funding it
Yep Chelsea don’t make that much revenue and their gate receipts, which aren’t great anyway, along with merchandise, took a big hit last season due to the RA and restrictions.

I can only think perhaps they are going big now as they know they’ll not be able to spend later due to the knock on effect which will kick in later?
 

Skills

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I completely disagree.

It's up to the board to set expectations. If they really gave (and are still giving) the manager free reign to go for FDJ despite all the known issues and hurdles there would be towards signing him, and are still persisting with him now instead of putting a stop to it and going for other targets then they're the ones at fault. Too often have we let managers do whatever the feck they want in the transfer window rather than exerting some level of control. Just look at Ole with Sancho first time round.
Don't you remember Maguire the first time around? We've got a large number of morons in our fanbase who live off the back the manager mantra - so it puts the guys above in a difficult situation.
 

phelans shorts

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Even if Utd are now aware FDJ wants to go to Chelsea and is likely to end up there. It wouldn’t be wise to brief to the media that we have pulled out of the deal. Because any new targets price will immediately shoot up. Utd are possibly trying to agree a deal for an alternative before making it public they aren’t after FDJ. Who knows.
This doesn’t really work either though. Those clubs will have somebody scouring the internet for information as cast iron as “but Harry Redknapp said…” and know where everybody stands
 

RedCoffee

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Now that Cucurella is done we might see more movement on this. Usually with such high profile transfers once one is finalized talks can accelerate on other targets. Think they will try for Fofana or de Jong next, if rumours are to be believed.

Also, Cucurella joining fits in with the timing of allowing Alonso to go to Barca, which could be linked to Frenkie.
Chelsea spending now at 200m for this summer.

If I recall the business plan was 2.5bn club purchase and 2bn investment in players over 10 years so I reckon they are done now.

Another 70m on De Jong isn't going to happen.

He's ours now!
 

Orc

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Us signing De Jong would be the equivalent of City going out and spending big on another attacking midfielder despite already having De Bruyne, Mahrez, Foden, Bernardo, and Grealish. It’s just nonsensical without us selling off 3-4 midfielders.

This is why I don’t believe these links no matter how many sources confirm our interest.
 

BrilliantOrange

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
The fact that United relies this heavily on his manager in stead of scouting/transfer embedded elsewhere in the organization - so that the manager can focus on what happens on the pitch - for its transfer targets is more embarrassing than anything else..
 

Murder on Zidane's Floor

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Yeah, I don't like where this is going. The change of tone in Utd's messaging here, combined with the other stuff of the last week is painting a bleak picture.
De Jong is the equivalent of Fellaini tbh, he's really good at one thing, in a specific system that caters for that one thing but limited elsewhere. This talk of him being a generational player is wrong imo, generational players aren't 25 struggling to hold down a place at their clubs.
 

Mmm-Qatarian

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I wouldn't say that any of the updates today are actually massively enlightening.

I can't blame people for trying to guess at what might be going on behind the scenes because I used to do it myself but I've learned from doing that that a lot of these guesses will end up being wildly inaccurate.

Bottom line is I have grown considerably less confident about this deal in the last week and that's because some reputable journalists on the English side have now firmly reported that Chelsea are interested, and there are logical reasons (Champions League, living in London) why De Jong might choose to go there instead of here. I'm done with trying to surmise things from every little tenuous update we get on this deal now; I'll change my position when we next hear something concrete from a reputable source. (And no, 'Arry does not count!!)
 

Brownie85

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I completely disagree.

It's up to the board to set expectations. If they really gave (and are still giving) the manager free reign to go for FDJ despite all the known issues and hurdles there would be towards signing him, and are still persisting with him now instead of putting a stop to it and going for other targets then they're the ones at fault. Too often have we let managers do whatever the feck they want in the transfer window rather than exerting some level of control. Just look at Ole with Sancho first time round.
But surely if someone at the very very very very top of United is leaking to people that de Jong wants Chelsea, then why aren't the board putting a stop to it? Surely if he wants to go to Chelsea not even ten Hag could change his mind, and it would make no sense to carry on. For us to still be in either means that he's not dead set on going to Chelsea and Harry is either lying or has been fed bad info, or we're going to to brief later on that the wage issue just couldn't be sorted and Chelsea have agreed to pay it all off, something we didn't want to do as we felt it wasn't our responsibility.
 

Chief123

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This doesn’t really work either though. Those clubs will have somebody scouring the internet for information as cast iron as “but Harry Redknapp said…” and know where everybody stands
But Utd officially saying they aren’t in the market for FDJ certainly strengthens the hand of the alternative players selling club. I’m not saying we wouldn’t get priced high anyway, but it certainly wouldn’t help us in negotiations.
 

RORY65

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Well if we end up with FDJ going to Chelsea, it will be on ETH (not the board) - he is the one who has insisted on us chasing him all summer instead of getting someone else, and he is the one who knows the player. And it will make him look a bit stupid to be quite honest.
I wouldn't blame Ten Hag at all. The club have brought him in and given him more say over the signings than he's ever had before, despite this being the biggest club he's ever worked for, and have seemingly only identified current or former Ajax players or players he knows from the Eredivise because the club have acknowledged that their scouting isn't good enough (sacking the 2 most senior scouts weeks before the window opens). Of course he's going to prioritise De Jong as someone he knows and thinks has quality rather than just naming random players he doesn't know as well or relying on flawed scouting information.
 

gica_7

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ten Hag clearly favors him over any other alternative. get your act together and sign him, will you, you incompetent bunch.
 

Brownie85

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They are selling a few players too. I wouldn't be surprised if Kante is moved out as well.
They don't need RLC, Mount, Kante, Kovacic, FDJ, Jorginho. That's too many quality midfielders.
Don't forget the other young midfielders they've added too. Makes no sense to be overstacking in one position
 

hobbers

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How the feck do you come to that conclusion :lol:
Because of literally everything that's happened in the last 2 months since we agreed a transfer fee.

And it doesn't matter whether he's put faith in what ETH has told him or not. If you're in charge of transfers it's your job to make sure you dont waste 3 months chasing someone who has no interest in playing for you.
 

FriedClams

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This thread has taught me that not a single journalist or ITK actually know anything.
 
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